įollowing his years at Balliol, Huxley, being financially indebted to his father, decided to find employment. He was able to take all knowledge for his province. For one thing, it put paid to his idea of taking up medicine as a career . I believe his blindness was a blessing in disguise. He edited Oxford Poetry in 1916, and in June of that year graduated BA with first class honours. He volunteered for the British Army in January 1916, for the Great War however, he was rejected on health grounds, being half-blind in one eye. In October 1913, Huxley entered Balliol College, Oxford, where he studied English literature. This 'ended his early dreams of becoming a doctor'. He contracted the eye disease Keratitis punctata in 1911 this 'left practically blind for two to three years'. His mother died in 1908, when he was 14 (his father later remarried). After Hillside he went on to Eton College. He was taught there by his own mother for several years until she became terminally ill. Huxley's education began in his father's well-equipped botanical laboratory, after which he enrolled at Hillside School near Godalming. According to his cousin and contemporary Gervas Huxley, he had an early interest in drawing. He was described by his brother, Julian, as someone who frequently ' the strangeness of things'. Īs a child, Huxley's nickname was 'Ogie', short for 'Ogre'. Aldous had another brother, Noel Trevenen Huxley (1889–1914), who took his own life after a period of clinical depression. His brother Julian Huxley and half-brother Andrew Huxley also became outstanding biologists.

Aldous was the grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, the zoologist, agnostic, and controversialist whom had often been called 'Darwin's Bulldog'. Julia named him Aldous after a character in one of her sister's novels. Julia was the niece of poet and critic Matthew Arnold and the sister of Mrs. He was the third son of the writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley, who edited The Cornhill Magazine, and his first wife, Julia Arnold, who founded Prior's Field School. Huxley was born in Godalming, Surrey, England, in 1894. In his most famous novel Brave New World (1932) and his final novel Island (1962), he presented his vision of dystopia and utopia, respectively.Įnglish Heritage blue plaque at 16 Bracknell Gardens, Hampstead, London, commemorating Aldous, his brother Julian, and his father Leonard He grew interested in philosophical mysticism, as well as universalism, addressing these subjects with works such as The Perennial Philosophy (1945), which illustrates commonalities between Western and Eastern mysticism, and The Doors of Perception (1954), which interprets his own psychedelic experience with mescaline. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times, and was elected Companion of Literature by the Royal Society of Literature in 1962. By the end of his life, Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the foremost intellectuals of his time. He spent the latter part of his life in the United States, living in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death. Early in his career, he published short stories and poetry and edited the literary magazine Oxford Poetry, before going on to publish travel writing, satire, and screenplays. He wrote nearly 50 books, both novels and non-fiction works, as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.īorn into the prominent Huxley family, he graduated from Balliol College, Oxford, with an undergraduate degree in English literature. Aldous Leonard Huxley (26 July 1894 – 22 November 1963) was an English writer and philosopher.

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