Aldous Huxley;: A Biography Volume 1 1894 - 1939

London: Chatto & Windus In Association With Collins London, 1973. Assumed First Edition . Hard Back. Very Good/Good. 6 1/2" X 9 1/2. 400 Pages Indexed. Aldous Huxley, whose works were translated and studied throughout the world, will surely rank as one of the outstanding English men of letters of his time. His enquiring mind and acute intelligence led him into many and diverse fields of thought. Indeed, as Sir Isaiah Berlin wrote, o Aldous Huxley with that special sensibility to the contours of the future which impersonal artists sometimes possess, stood on the edge of, and peered beyond, the present frontiers of our self-knowledge. He was a wholly civilised, good and scrupulous man, and one of the greatest imaginable distinction'. He was also a man of great sweetness of temper, with an unfailing sense of enjoyment and fun, and this made his company endlessly stimulating and entertaining. In writing the biography of such a man, Sybille Bedford, a friend of some thirty years, gives shape and coherence to the development of a life, that for all its extraordinary quality, had it common share of ups and downs. As a girl she lived for long periods in his household: the details of his life - gossip, picnics, jokes, money, work, the endless house-moves - were familiar to her at first hand. His friends were, often, her friends. His immense reading helped to form her mind. Like him her great distinction as a writer extends over other Iorms besides the novels for which she is best known on both sides of the Atlantic. So perfect a coming together of author and subject could hardly fail to produce biography of a high order, and no blurb can do justice to the richness, variety, and humanity of this book.