The collected works of Aldous Huxley

24 total works

Brave New World

by Aldous Huxley

Published 12 December 1932

This volume is part of a new series of novels, plays and stories at GCSE/Key Stage 4 level, designed to meet the needs of the National Curriculum syllabus. Each text includes an introduction, pre-reading activities, notes and coursework activities. Also provided is a section on the process of writing, often compiled by the author. Into the neatly programmed "Brave New World" of test-tube babies and drug-controlled happiness, misfit Bernard Marx brings the innocent Savage. Huxley's vision of the future is also a chilling comment on the present.

The Doors of Perception

by Aldous Huxley

Published 15 August 1958

In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, he took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything, from the flowers in a vase to the folds in his grey flannel trousers, was transformed. "Red books like rubies, emerald books, books of agate and aquamarien. I was not looking now at an unusual flower arrangement. I was seeing what Adam had seen on the morning of his creation - the miracle, moment by moment, of naked existence." Huxley described his new "sacramental vision of reality" and the liberating potential of hallucinogenic drugs in his 1954 essay, "The Doors of Perception" and its 1956 sequel, "Heaven and Hell". These writings were crucial to the brave new dawn of the psychedelic 1960s.

Island

by Aldous Huxley

Published December 1962

For over a hundred years the Pacific island of Pala has been the scene of a unique experiment in civilisation. Its inhabitants live in a society where western science has been brought together with Eastern philosophy to create a paradise on earth. When cynical journalist, Will Farnaby, arrives to research potential oil reserves on Pala, he quickly falls in love with the way of life on the island. Soon the need to complete his mission becomes an intolerable burden and he must make a difficult choice.

In counterpoint to Brave New World and Ape and Essence, in Island Huxley gives us his vision of utopia.

WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL INTRODUCTION BY DAVID BRADSHAW

Ends and Means

by Aldous Huxley

Published December 1966

Contemporary intellectuals still struggle over the relationship of ends to means, especially in political discourse. Pacifism is still an important topic today, as terrorism and dictatorial states abound. Many will find solace in Ends and Means, while others will find the book only a case study of the relationship of ethics to politics.

Aldous Huxley examines common issues in a unique fashion. How can the regression in charity through which we are living, and for which each one of us is in some measure responsible, be halted and reversed? How can existing society be transformed into the ideal society described by the prophets? How can the average sensual man and the exceptional (and more dangerous) ambitious man be transformed into a non-attached being, one who can create a society significantly better than our own?

Huxley discusses the relationship between the theories and the practices of reformers and the nature of the universe. He argues that our beliefs about the ultimate nature of reality help us formulate conceptions of right and wrong, not only in our private life, but also in the sphere of politics and economics. Far from being irrelevant, our philosophical beliefs are the final determining factor in our actions. This provocative classic volume, now available in paperback, will continue to stimulate discussion and thought.

Mortal Coils

by Aldous Huxley

Published 1 January 1921

Mortal Coils is a collection of five short fictional pieces written by Aldous Huxley in 1922. The title uses a phrase from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1: ...To die, to sleep, To sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub, For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come, When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, Must give us pause ...The stories all concern themselves with some sort of trouble, normally of an amorous nature, and often ending with disappointment.

Limbo

by Aldous Huxley

Published 1 January 1920

Ape and Essence

by Aldous Huxley

Published August 1967

When Aldous Huxley's Brave New World first appeared in 1932, it presented in terms of purest fantasy a society bent on self-destruction. Few of its outraged critics anticipated the onset of another world war with its Holocaust and atomic ruin. In 1948, seeing that the probable shape of his anti-utopia had been altered inevitably by the facts of history, Huxley wrote Ape and Essence. In this savage novel, using the form of a film scenario, he transports us to the year 2108. The setting is Los Angeles where a "rediscovery expedition" from New Zealand is trying to make sense of what is left. From chief botanist Alfred Poole we learn, to our dismay, about the twenty-second-century way of life. "It was inevitable that Mr. Huxley should have written this book: one could almost have seen it since Hiroshima is the necessary sequel to Brave New World."-Alfred Kazin. "The book has a certain awesome impressiveness; its sheer intractable bitterness cannot but affect the reader."-Time.

The Olive Tree

by Aldous Huxley

Published December 1947

The Devils of Loudun

by Aldous Huxley

Published 19 March 1970

Urbain Grandier, parson of the French town of Loudun, was tortured and burned at the stake in 1634. He was accused of being in league with the Devil and seducing an entire convent of nuns, in what is the most sensational case of mass possession and sexual hysteria in history. Charming, handsome, dandyish and promiscuous, as soon as Grandier arrived in Loudun it became clear that he took more than a pastoral interest in his female parishioners. His reputation for arousing extraordinary sexual passions in the townswomen spread to the Prioress of the local convent, Sister Jeanne, who became obsessed with the "delicious monster". Soon all the nuns were gripped by fits and convulsions, falling into frenzied orgies of lustful depravity that attracted tourists from all over France. But was Grandier really the sorcerer responsible for their possession, or was it a political frame-up from Cardinal Richelieu down, to get this arrogant, womanizing priest out of the way? Aldous Huxley's account, which was made into a salacious film by Ken Russell, is full of details of witchcraft, gruesone exorcisms and the superstitions of an age haunted by devils.

Literature and Science

by Aldous Huxley

Published December 1970

Antic Hay

by Aldous Huxley

Published 1 January 1923

London life just after World War I, devoid of values and moving headlong into chaos at breakneck speed - Aldous Huxley's Antic Hay, like Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises, portrays a world of lost souls madly pursuing both pleasure and meaning. Fake artists, third-rate poets, pompous critics, pseudo-scientists, con-men, bewildered romantics, cock-eyed futurists - all inhabit this world spinning out of control, as wildly comic as it is disturbingly accurate. In a style that ranges from the lyrical to the absurd, and with characters whose identities shift and change as often as their names and appearances, Huxley has here invented a novel that bristles with life and energy, what the New York Times called "a delirium of sense enjoyment!"

Brave New World Revisited

by Aldous Huxley

Published 1 January 1932

Written 27 years after the 1932 publication of "Brave New World", this book addresses the prophecies he made in that work, believing the far-fetched fantasies of his nightmare future to be turning too swiftly into reality. Examining overpopulation, mass communication, big business, centralized government, the effects of television and advertising, this work is Huxley's polemic against modern society.

Eyeless in Gaza

by Aldous Huxley

Published March 1969

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY DAVID BRADSHAW

Anthony Beavis is a man inclined to recoil from life. His past is haunted by the death of his best friend Brian and by his entanglement with the cynical and manipulative Mary Amberley. Realising that his determined detachment from the world has been motivated not by intellectual honesty but by moral cowardice, Anthony attempts to find a new way to live. Eyeless in Gaza is considered by many to be Huxley's definitive work of fiction.

Time Must Have a Stop

by Aldous Huxley

Published December 1953

Sebastian Barnack, a handsome English schoolboy, is on bad terms with his socialist father who disapproves of his hedonistic lifestyle. He escapes to Florence in order to learn about life. His education there, thanks to the contradictory influences of his scurrilous Uncle Eustace and a saintly bookseller, is both sacred and profane. A haunting novel from one of the twentieth century's most powerful commentators.

Along the Road

by Aldous Huxley

Published December 1949

Huxley reveals his thoughts on the subject of travelling in general and tourism in particular. He compares walking to motoring, looks for the traveller's-eye view in literature, weighs up his selection of guidebooks, analyzes the effects of sunglasses on the landscape, dissects our attitudes towards town and country and recomends some reading matter for a journey.

Brief Candles

by Aldous Huxley

Published August 1965

Adonis and the Alphabet

by Aldous Huxley

Published December 1956

Beyond the Mexique Bay

by Aldous Huxley

Published December 1948

Music at Night

by Aldous Huxley

Published June 1970

Collected Short Stories

by Aldous Huxley

Published November 1969

Aldous Huxley's stature as one of the giants of modern English prose and of social commentary in our time is confirmed in this gathering of his distinguished stories into a single volume. Twenty-one pieces are here, including "The Gioconda Smile," "Little Mexican," "Young Archimedes," and "Chawdron." Together they offer a complete view of Huxley's work in the genre, in which he established himself as an acknowledged master.