Aldous Huxley's Biography

Aldous Huxley was born in 1894 in Godalming, Surrey, England. He came from what seems to be a very intelligent family. His dad was also a writer. I feel like since he was raised in such a intelligent environment that this helped him develop complex ideas. Huxley was taught by his mother for a good portion of his life but when she became terminally ill he started attending Hillside. He started college at Eton college but got seriously sick and had to drop out. Once he had recovered he got his degree at Baliol College, Oxford.



After college and in his late 20s' is when Huxley started getting serious with his novels. He wrote many novels ranging from Crome Yellow and Antic hay which describe the mood of the 1920s' to Brave New World and island which are both about utopian worlds.



I feel like Huxley got his inspiration to write Brave New World because he grew up during the industrial revolution and saw how mass production was taking over. I can really see how he thought the world was going to be like that in a few hundred years or at least come up with the aspect of it happening.



I also feel like Huxley's great sense of humor played a big influence in the book. " Oh Ford" is a very common phrase used in this book. instead of having god they look at Henry Ford as a idol. They even use the term A.F. (after Ford) as a way of measuring time e.g. B.C. A.D.. When I first heard that I laughed hard. Another thing is the way that they condition the kids to be super sexualy active.



"What's the lesson this afternoon?" he asked. 'We had Elementary Sex for the first forty minutes,' she answered." This quote is from the beginning of the book when the director is kind of giving a tour of the baby factory/daycare. This really cracked me up along with many other creepy A.F. lines.



Huxley had a pretty interesting life. When he got ill in college he lost his eyesight for a few years which actually saved him from the draft (if you think about it, if he wouldn't have gotten sick he probably would've died a lot ealier and never even write a noval.). Once he started getting better his eyesight started coming back which enabled him to go back to college to study. Around 1939 Huxley started using the Bates Method in hopes of better vision. He claimed that the Bates method helped him regain his eyesight, but some people are skeptical how much better his vision was. Though it might not have gotten that much better it compelled his to write the book called The Art of Seeing.



Another interesting aspect of Huxley's life is his involvment in hellucinagenic drugs like mescaline and LSD. Huxley truely believed that hellucinagenic drugs could open your mind up to enlightenment. He believed this so much he wrote the noval called The Doors of Perception which is a book about psychadelic enlightenment. That book became a cult noval among hippies in the 60s.