Huxley, Aldous Leonard

(1894-1963)

   Born near Godalming, Surrey, he started at Eton College in 1908, and two years later a severe eye infection, which caused near-blindness, forced him to leave. He taught himself to read Braille and he graduated with a first in English literature from Balliol College, Oxford, in 1916. He worked on the periodical Athenaeum from 1919 to 1921. He spent much time in Italy until the late 1930s, when he settled in California and started using Dr. W.H. Bates' method for improving eyesight. By the middle of 1939 he said he was able to read and write without spectacles, and in 1942 he published his conclusions in The Art of Seeing. He died in Los Angeles; in 1971 his ashes were buried in his parents' grave at Compton cemetery, Surrey. He was an ardent supporter of the Peace Pledge Union, for which he lectured and wrote pamphlets. He wrote novels, essays, short stories, non-fiction and poetry anthologies. Some of his poems: "Antic Hay," "Armour," "Doors of the Temple," "Fifth Philosopher's Song," "Jonah," "September," "The Burning Wheel," "The Canal," "Villiers de l'Isle-Adam."

   Sources: Chapters into Verse. Vol. I: Genesis to Malachi. Robert Atwan and Laurance Wieder, eds. Oxford University Press. 1993. Collected Poetry of Aldous Huxley. Donald Watt, ed. Chatto, 1971. Dictionary of National Biography. Electronic Edition 1.1. Oxford University Press, 1997. Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite DVD, 2006. Fantastic Fiction (http://www.fantasticfiction.co.uk/authors/Aldous_Huxley.htm). The National Portrait Gallery (www.npg.org.uk). The Columbia Granger's Index to Poetry. 11th ed. The Columbia Granger's World of Poetry, Columbia University Press, 2005 (http://www.columbiagrangers.org). The Complete Works of Aldous Huxley (http://somaweb.org/w/huxworks.html). The Oxford Book of Comic Verse. John Gross, ed. Oxford University Press, 1994. The Oxford Book of Sonnets. John Fuller, ed. Oxford University Press, 2000.