Aldous Huxley - Between the Wars: Essays and Letters [Hardcover]

Aldous Huxley (Author), David Bradshaw (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1994

Aldous Huxley had left England by 1923 and was living a balmy exile in Florence, Paris, and the Cote d'Azur. Already a literary success at home, his image—from today's vantage point—was that of an aloof and detached highbrow whose sole concern was to satirize the emotional and intellectual failings of British life. Yet as these newly published letters and essays show, Huxley was drawn to the social and political upheavals of this period between the wars, made frequent visits to England to investigate them, and wrote trenchantly about them. His firsthand experience with Mussolini's fascism and with victims of Nazi oppression led him to renounce authoritarianism and to champion the plight of ordinary men and women. Between the Wars, skillfully edited and introduced by David Bradshaw, contains essays on art and literature, letters to H. L. Mencken, pieces from the early thirties lamenting the behavior of the masses and supporting elite rule, and writings from the late thirties that reveal Huxley's growing disaffection with the direction of European politics. In this centennial year of Aldous Huxley's birth, Between the Wars enhances his stature as one of the giants of modern English prose and of social commentary in our time.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

This gathering of Huxley's neglected essays and broadcasts from the 1930s dispels the image of him as an aloof highbrow and reveals the range of his social and political commitments. Around the time he wrote Brave New World , which expressed disdain for mass culture, the English novelist also published several reports on the plight of the unemployed, the homeless and the exploitation of British workers. An early, outspoken opponent of Hitler and of British fascists, Huxley briefly became an ardent proponent of Soviet-style central planning, embracing policies he seemed to revile in his dystopian novel. Skillfully edited by Oxford fellow Bradshaw, these 28 selections give us several disparate Huxleys--the supporter of eugenics and compulsory sterilization of mental defectives, the critic of unregulated technological progress, the shrewd analyst of the mass psychology of fascism, the disciple of H. L. Mencken.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

For the centenary of Huxley's birth this year, editor Bradshaw, a fellow at Oxford University and biographer of Huxley, has assembled 28 previously uncollected articles published during the interwar years. Although Huxley is now primarily known as a detached satirist of human society and its conventions, thanks to novels such as Brave New World and Crome Yellow, Bradshaw argues that he was far more politically aware and sympathetic than his currently available work would indicate. His early admiration for the American social critic H.L. Mencken tapered off as Huxley became disenchanted with Mencken's antidemocratic beliefs. The articles featured here show Huxley eschewing authoritarian solutions and promoting social unity following the rise of Hitler and fascism. Bradshaw has carefully selected works from Huxley's massive journalistic output to support his views; it would be interesting to see the entire corpus of Huxley's work again in print. For comprehensive literature collections.
Shelley Cox, Southern Illinois Univ., Carbondale
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee; 1st edition (July 1, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 156663055X
• ISBN-13: 978-1566630559
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.9 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,436,346 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pivotal to understanding Huxley!, March 26, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Aldous Huxley - Between the Wars: Essays and Letters (Hardcover)

Certainly, Aldous Huxley believed in the rule of elites and had anti-democratic notions -- for a period of time. In these essays and letters it is a troubled Huxley that can't fathom the solutions to the social problems of his time that can be observed. He went through many changes and was greatly influenced in thought by ocurrances which he had to live through. This is a pivotal point to understading Huxley which has been overlooked as a consequence of the "claims" that his greatest novels are a few that only reflect one period of his life (e.g. Brave New World). Must read! Redeems Huxley as a thinker with great love and concern for masses.