The Devils of Loudun
Table of Contents
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Epub ISBN: 9781409079507
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Published by Vintage 2005
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Copyright © Mrs Laura Huxley 1952
Biographical introduction copyright © David Bradshaw 1994
Aldous Huxley has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
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First published in Great Britain in 1952 by Chatto & Windus
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About the Author
Aldous Huxley was born on 26 July 1894 near Godalming, Surrey. He began writing poetry and short stories in his early twenties, but it was his first novel
Crome Yellow
(1921), which established his literary reputation. This was swiftly followed by
Antic Hay
(1923),
Those Barren Leaves
(1925) and
Point Counter Point
(1928) – bright, brilliant satires of contemporary society. For most of the 1920s Huxley lived in Italy but in the 1930s he moved to Sanary, near Toulon.
Crome Yellow
(1921), which established his literary reputation. This was swiftly followed by
Antic Hay
(1923),
Those Barren Leaves
(1925) and
Point Counter Point
(1928) – bright, brilliant satires of contemporary society. For most of the 1920s Huxley lived in Italy but in the 1930s he moved to Sanary, near Toulon.
In the years leading up to the Second World War, Huxley’s work took on a more sombre tone in response to the confusion of a society which he felt to be spinning dangerously out of control. His great novels of ideas, including his most famous work
Brave New World
(published in 1932 this warned against the dehumanising aspects of scientific and material ‘progress’) and the pacifist novel
Eyeless in Gaza
(1936) were accompanied by a series of wise and brilliant essays, collected in volume form under such titles as
Music at Night
(1931) and
Ends and Means
(1937).
Brave New World
(published in 1932 this warned against the dehumanising aspects of scientific and material ‘progress’) and the pacifist novel
Eyeless in Gaza
(1936) were accompanied by a series of wise and brilliant essays, collected in volume form under such titles as
Music at Night
(1931) and
Ends and Means
(1937).
In 1937, at the height of his fame, Huxley left Europe to live in California, working for a time as a screenwriter in Hollywood. As the West braced itself for war, Huxley came increasingly to believe that the key to solving the world’s problems lay in changing the individual through mystical enlightenment. The exploration of the inner life through mysticism and hallucinogenic drugs was to dominate his work for the rest of his life. His beliefs found expression in both fiction (
Time Must Have a Stop
, 1944 and
Island
, 1962) and non-fiction (
The Perennial Philosophy
, 1945,
Grey Eminence
, 1941 and the famous account of his first mescalin experience,
The Doors of Perception
, 1954).
Time Must Have a Stop
, 1944 and
Island
, 1962) and non-fiction (
The Perennial Philosophy
, 1945,
Grey Eminence
, 1941 and the famous account of his first mescalin experience,
The Doors of Perception
, 1954).
Huxley died in California on 22 November 1963.
ALSO BY ALDOUS HUXLEY
Novels
Crome Yellow
Antic Hay
Those Barren Leaves
Point Counter Point
Brave New World
Eyeless in Gaza
After Many a Summer
Time Must Have a Stop
Ape and Essence
The Genius and the Goddess
Island
Short Stories
Limbo
Mortal Coils
Little Mexican
Two or Three Graces
Brief Candles
The Gioconda Smile
(Collected Short Stories)
Biography
Grey Eminence
Travel
Along the Road
Jesting Pilate
Beyond the Mexique Bay
Poetry and Drama
The Burning Wheel
Jonah
The Defeat of Youth
Leda
Verses and a Comedy
The Gioconda Smile
Essays and Belles Lettres
On the Margin
Proper Studies
Do What You Will
Music at Night
Texts and Pretexts
The Olive Tree
Ends and Means
The Art of Seeing
The Perennial Philosophy
Science, Liberty and Peace
Themes and Variations
The Doors of Perception
Adonis and the Alphabet
Heaven and Hell
Brave New World Revisited
Literature and Science
The Human Situation
Moksha
For Children
The Crows of Pearblossom
A
LDOUS
H
UXLEY
(1894–1963)
LDOUS
H
UXLEY
(1894–1963)
O
N
26 J
ULY
1894, near Godalming in Surrey, Aldous Leonard Huxley was born into a family which had only recently become synonymous with the intellectual aristocracy. Huxley’s grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, had earned notoriety as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ and fame as a populariser of science, just as his own probing and controversial works were destined to outrage and exhilarate readers and non-readers alike in the following century. Aldous Huxley’s mother was a niece of the poet and essayist Matthew Arnold, and he was a nephew of the redoubtable Mrs Humphry Ward, doyenne of late-Victorian novelists. This inheritance, combining the scientific and the literary in a blend which was to become characteristic of his vision as a writer, was both a source of great pride and a burden to Huxley in his formative years. Much was expected of him.
N
26 J
ULY
1894, near Godalming in Surrey, Aldous Leonard Huxley was born into a family which had only recently become synonymous with the intellectual aristocracy. Huxley’s grandfather, Thomas Henry Huxley, had earned notoriety as ‘Darwin’s bulldog’ and fame as a populariser of science, just as his own probing and controversial works were destined to outrage and exhilarate readers and non-readers alike in the following century. Aldous Huxley’s mother was a niece of the poet and essayist Matthew Arnold, and he was a nephew of the redoubtable Mrs Humphry Ward, doyenne of late-Victorian novelists. This inheritance, combining the scientific and the literary in a blend which was to become characteristic of his vision as a writer, was both a source of great pride and a burden to Huxley in his formative years. Much was expected of him.
Three traumatic events left their mark on the young Huxley. In 1908 his mother died of cancer, and this led to the effective break-up of the family home. Two years later, while a schoolboy at Eton, Huxley contracted an eye infection which made him almost completely blind for a time and severely impaired his vision for the rest of his life. The suicide of his brother Trevenen in August 1914 robbed Huxley of the person to whom he felt closest. Over twenty years later, in
Eyeless in Gaza
(1936), Huxley’s treatment of the death of the main character’s mother and his embodiment of ‘Trev’ in the novel as the vulnerable Brian Foxe give some indication of the indelible pain which these tragic occurrences left in their wake. To a considerable degree, they account for the darkness, pungency and cynicism which feature so prominently in Huxley’s work throughout the inter-war period.
Eyeless in Gaza
(1936), Huxley’s treatment of the death of the main character’s mother and his embodiment of ‘Trev’ in the novel as the vulnerable Brian Foxe give some indication of the indelible pain which these tragic occurrences left in their wake. To a considerable degree, they account for the darkness, pungency and cynicism which feature so prominently in Huxley’s work throughout the inter-war period.
Within months of achieving a First in English Language and Literature at Balliol College, Oxford in 1916, Huxley published
The Burning Wheel
. Huxley’s first collection of verse, and the three which followed it,
Jonah
(1917),
The Defeat of Youth
(1918) and
Leda
(1920), reveal his indebtedness to French symbolism and
fin de siècle
aestheticism. Also discernible, however, beneath the poetry’s triste and ironic patina, is a concern with the inward world of the spirit which anticipates Huxley’s later absorption in mysticism. These volumes of poetry were the first of over fifty separate works of fiction, drama, verse, criticism, biography, travel and speculative writing which Huxley was to produce during the course of his life.
The Burning Wheel
. Huxley’s first collection of verse, and the three which followed it,
Jonah
(1917),
The Defeat of Youth
(1918) and
Leda
(1920), reveal his indebtedness to French symbolism and
fin de siècle
aestheticism. Also discernible, however, beneath the poetry’s triste and ironic patina, is a concern with the inward world of the spirit which anticipates Huxley’s later absorption in mysticism. These volumes of poetry were the first of over fifty separate works of fiction, drama, verse, criticism, biography, travel and speculative writing which Huxley was to produce during the course of his life.
Unfit for military service, Huxley worked as a farm labourer at Lady Ottoline Morrell’s Garsington Manor after he left Oxford. Here he met not only D.H. Lawrence, Bertrand Russell, Clive Bell, Mark Gertler and other Bloomsbury figures, but also a Belgian refugee, Maria Nys, whom he married in 1919. By then Huxley was working for the
Athenaeum
magazine under the adroit editorship of Middleton Murry. Soon after he became the first British editor of
House and Garden
, worked for
Vogue
and contributed musical criticism to the
Weekly Westminster Gazette
in the early 1920s.
Athenaeum
magazine under the adroit editorship of Middleton Murry. Soon after he became the first British editor of
House and Garden
, worked for
Vogue
and contributed musical criticism to the
Weekly Westminster Gazette
in the early 1920s.
Limbo
(1920), a collection of short stories, preceded the appearance of
Crome Yellow
in 1921, the novel with which Huxley first made his name as a writer. Inspired by, among others, Thomas Love Peacock, Norman Douglas and Anatole France, Huxley’s first novel incorporated many incidents from his sojourn at Garsington as well as mischievous portraits of its chatelaine and his fellow guests. More blatantly still,
Crome Yellow
is an iconoclastic tilt at the Victorian and Edwardian mores which had resulted in the First World War and its terrible aftermath. For all its comic bravura, which won acclaim from writers such as Scott Fitzgerald and Max Beerbohm,
Crome Yellow
may be read, along with Lytton Strachey’s
Eminent Victorians
(1918) and Huxley’s second novel
Antic Hay
(1923), as an expression of the pervasive mood of disenchantment in the early 1920s. Huxley told his father that
Antic Hay
was ‘written by a member of what I may call the war-generation for others of his kind’. He went on to say that it was intended to reflect ‘the life and opinions of an age which has seen the violent disruption of almost all the standards, conventions and values current in the previous epoch’.
(1920), a collection of short stories, preceded the appearance of
Crome Yellow
in 1921, the novel with which Huxley first made his name as a writer. Inspired by, among others, Thomas Love Peacock, Norman Douglas and Anatole France, Huxley’s first novel incorporated many incidents from his sojourn at Garsington as well as mischievous portraits of its chatelaine and his fellow guests. More blatantly still,
Crome Yellow
is an iconoclastic tilt at the Victorian and Edwardian mores which had resulted in the First World War and its terrible aftermath. For all its comic bravura, which won acclaim from writers such as Scott Fitzgerald and Max Beerbohm,
Crome Yellow
may be read, along with Lytton Strachey’s
Eminent Victorians
(1918) and Huxley’s second novel
Antic Hay
(1923), as an expression of the pervasive mood of disenchantment in the early 1920s. Huxley told his father that
Antic Hay
was ‘written by a member of what I may call the war-generation for others of his kind’. He went on to say that it was intended to reflect ‘the life and opinions of an age which has seen the violent disruption of almost all the standards, conventions and values current in the previous epoch’.
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