Best Selling Books by Aldous Huxley

Those Barren Leaves is a satirical novel by Aldous Huxley, published in 1925. The title is derived from the poem ''The Tables Turned'' by William Wordsworth which ends with the words: Enough of Science and of Art; Close up those barren leaves; Come forth, and bring with you a heart That watches and receives. Stripping the pretensions of those who claim a spot among the cultural elite, it is the story of Mrs. Aldwinkle and her entourage, who are gathered in an Italian palace to relive the glories of the Renaissance. For all their supposed sophistication, they are nothing but sad and superficial individuals in the final analysis.

Though Aldous Huxley is primarily remembered for his novels, and to a lesser extent his essays, he began his writing career as a poet. While a student at Balliol College at Oxford, having been exempted from military service due to extremely poor eyesight, he was involved in several student poetry magazines. In September 1916 his first book of poetry, "The Burning Wheel", appeared. (Wikipedia)

In this "brilliantly written" book, the author of Brave New World reflects on his dystopian classic—and its echoes in the real world decades later ( Kirkus Reviews). Written almost thirty years after the publication of Aldous Huxley''s groundbreaking dystopian novel, Brave New World Revisited compares the "future" of 1958 with his vision of it from the early 1930s. Touching on subjects as diverse as world population, drugs, subliminal suggestion, and totalitarianism, these timeless essays provide a fascinating look at ideas of early science fiction in the context of the real world. "It is a frightening experience, indeed, to discover how much of his satirical prediction of a distant future became reality in so short a time. . . . fascinating." — The New York Times Book Review

A Hollywood millionaire with a terror of death, whose personal physician happens to be working on a theory of longevity-these are the elements of Aldous Huxley''s caustic and entertaining satire on man''s desire to live indefinitely. With his customary wit and intellectual sophistication, Huxley pursues his characters in their quest for the eternal, finishing on a note of horror. "This is Mr. Huxley''s Hollywood novel, and you might expect it to be fantastic, extravagant, crazy and preposterous. It is all that, and heaven and hell too....It is the kind of novel that he is particularly the master of, where the most extraordinary and fortuitous events are followed by contemplative little essays on the meaning of life....The story is outrageously good."-New York Times. "A highly sensational plot that will keep astonishing you to practically the final sentence."-The New Yorker. "Mr. Huxley''s elegant mockery, his cruel aptness of phrase, the revelations and the ingenious surprises he springs on the reader are those of a master craftsman; Mr. Huxley is at the top of his form." -London Times Literary Supplement.

A satiric view of intellectual life in the ''20s and is populated with characters based on such celebrities of the time as D.H. Lawrence, KatherineMansfield, Sir Oswald Mosley, Nancy Cunard, and John Middleton Murray, aswell as Huxley himself.

Breve fra Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) fra årene 1899-1963

"In this savage novel Huxley transports us to Los Angeles in the year 2108, where we learn to our dismay about the 22nd-century way of life."

In this anthology of 26 essays, Huxley discusses the nature of spiritual practice, good and evil, religion and magic, and the best texts of the various religious traditions. This is Huxley''s celebration of the ultimate reality.

Some of the characters are thinly disguised portraits. Perhaps the most famous of Huxley''s early novels.

"Crome Yellow is the first novel by British author Aldous Huxley, published in 1921. In the book, Huxley satirises the fads and fashions of the time. It is the story of a house party at Crome, a parodic version of Garsington Manor, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, a house where authors such as Huxley and T. S. Eliot used to gather and write.The book contains a brief pre-figuring of Huxley''s later novel, Brave New World. Mr. Scogan, one of the characters, describes an ""impersonal generation"" of the future that will ""take the place of Nature''s hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world."""

In 1953, in the presence of an investigator, Aldous Huxley took four-tenths of a gramme of mescalin, sat down and waited to see what would happen. When he opened his eyes everything was transformed. Huxley described his experience in The Doors of Perception and its sequel Heaven and Hell.

From the author of Brave New World comes the story of Sebastian Barnack, a naive young poet on holiday with his uncle in Florence where his real education begins. Against his father’s wishes, Sebastian visits his uncle in Italy with the objective of finding formal wear, but stumbles into so much more than a shopping trip. Among other adventures, he embarks upon his first love affair with an older woman; inherits, sells, then steals a Dégas painting; attends a botched séance; and incurs the wrath of the Italian Fascisti. As always with Huxley’s fiction, a genuine novel-of-ideas lurks just beneath the satirical surface, as Sebastian’s heart is torn between two competing philosophies: the hedonistic materialism embodied by his uncle Eustace and the spiritual wisdom of his uncle Bruno. The novel that Huxley himself thought was his most successful at "fusing idea with story," Time Must Have a Stop is part of Huxley''s lifelong attempt to explore the dilemmas of a twentieth-century person and to create characters who, though ill-equipped to solve the dilemmas, all go stumbling on in their painfully serious comedies.

Over the course of his long career, British writer Aldous Huxley (1894-1963) shifted away from elitist social satires and an uncompromising irreligion toward greater concern For The masses And The use of religious terms and imagery. This change in Huxley''s thinking underpins the previously unpublished playNow More Than Ever. Written in 1932-1933 just afterBrave New World, Now More Than Everis a response To The social, economic, and political upheavals of its time. Huxley''s protagonist is an idealistic financier whose grandiose scheme for industrial renewal drives him to swindling and finally to suicide. His fate allows Huxley to expose the evils he perceives in free-market capitalism while pleading the case for national economic planning And The rationalisation of Britain''s industrial base. This volume contains the full text ofNow More Than Ever, a play hitherto believed to be lost. A "thinker''s play," it is the last of Huxley''s major writings to be published and immensely important to understanding his development as a writer. The editors of this volume have annotated the play for contemporary readers. Their introduction sets the play in the context of Huxley''s intellectual life. David Bradshaw is Hawthornden Fellow and Tutor in English Literature at Worcester College, Oxford. James Sexton is a Lecturer in English at Camosun College in Victoria, British Columbia.

Crome Yellow by Aldous Huxley