Complete Essays, Volume II: 1926-1929

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Overview

These first two volumes of a projected five, in preparation for several years, begin a major publishing venture, collecting the complete essays of one of the giants of modern English prose and of social commentary in our time. The first two volumes span the most productive period of Huxley's career. Volume I begins with his essays for Gilbert Murray's Athenaeum and his music essays for the New Westminster Gazette. Volume II continues through the 1920s and includes his controversial essays on India and the empire ...

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Overview

These first two volumes of a projected five, in preparation for several years, begin a major publishing venture, collecting the complete essays of one of the giants of modern English prose and of social commentary in our time. The first two volumes span the most productive period of Huxley's career. Volume I begins with his essays for Gilbert Murray's Athenaeum and his music essays for the New Westminster Gazette. Volume II continues through the 1920s and includes his controversial essays on India and the empire in "Jesting Pilate." The essays of both volumes range from nuanced assessments of art and architecture to political analyses, history, science, religion, and art, and a newly discovered series on music. Wide-ranging, allusive, and witty, they are informed by the probing skepticism of a highly educated and ironically incisive member of the English upper middle class. Huxley's fascination with the codes and conventions of European culture, his growing apprehensions about the menacing collapse of the European political order, and his awareness of the impact of science and technology on the post-Versailles world of England, France, Germany, and the United States form the basis for his critique. His subjects overlap with the satirical novels he wrote during the period between the wars, culminating in Point Counter Point and Brave New World. At their best, these essays stand among the finest examples of the genre in modern literature.

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Editorial Reviews

The New Yorker
To read all the essays in sequence is like being enrolled at the college of your dreams.
The Washington Times
A remarkable publishing event...these volumes return Huxley from our forgetfulness so as to enjoy his fine intelligence, prose and exemplary strengths.
— Jeffrey Hart
Economist
There is much to enjoy in these volumes...they are important as a document of his times.
New Yorker
To read all the essays in sequence is like being enrolled at the college of your dreams.
Los Angeles Times
He writes with an easy assurance and a command of classical and modern cross-references.
— Christopher Hitchens
Atlantic Monthly
An important and admirable publishing event.
Washington Times
A remarkable publishing event...these volumes return Huxley from our forgetfulness so as to enjoy his fine intelligence, prose and exemplary strengths.
— Jeffrey Hart
Times Literary Supplement
The editors...have done their job with commendable thoroughness.
— P. N. Furbank
Los Angeles Times
He writes with an easy assurance and a command of classical and modern cross-references.
— Hitchens, Christopher
From The Critics
Clear, judicious, thorough and unfailingly interesting; a solid work on a most significant topic.
Library Journal
Although today Huxley (1894-1963) is consigned to the canons of required summer reading (Brave New World), he was a brilliant satirical novelist (Crome Yellow and Antic Hay) and a wide-ranging essayist, exercising his wit and learning on topics from literature and music to philosophy and science. In these first two volumes of a projected five-volume set, editors Baker (English, Univ. of Wisconsin) and Sexton (English, Camosun Coll., BC) gather the early essays that first appeared in magazines. Also included are those essays on travel, history, society, music, art, religion, science, and literature that Huxley himself published in five books between 1923 and 1929. Huxley offers opinions on what books to take on vacation (those "susceptible of being read in a short time") and the reasons people travel ("out of a kind of snobbery"); riveting portraits of Ben Jonson, Chaucer, Pascal, St. Francis, and Rasputin; as well as incisive social commentary on religion, eugenics, and imperialism. Arranged chronologically, the essays nicely reveal Huxley's development as a writer. These two volumes contain entertaining and enlightening writings, but this is ultimately a specialized offering recommended only for academic and large public libraries.--Henry Carrigan, Lancaster, PA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Booknews
Volume II of a projected six-volume collection of Huxley's essays. It spans the later years (1926-1929) of the most productive period of his career and includes his controversial work on India and the empire in . The essays, presenting assessments of art and architecture as well as political analyses, history, science, religion, and art, reflect many of the issues and anxieties of the interwar period, comprise a documentary tour of Europe at the time, and reveal the probing skepticism of a highly educated member of the English upper middle class. Edited with commentary by Baker (English, U. of Wisconsin) and Sexton (English, Camosun College). Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)
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Product Details

  • ISBN-13: 9781566633239
  • Publisher: Ivan R Dee
  • Publication date: 11/28/2000
  • Series: Complete Essays of Aldous Huxley Series
  • Pages: 607
  • Sales rank: 1,362,068
  • Product dimensions: 6.46 (w) x 9.44 (h) x 1.83 (d)

Meet the Author

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) was one of the most important novelists of the twentieth century. Robert S. Baker is professor of literature at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and author of The Dark Historic Page and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. James Sexton teaches English at Camosun College in British Columbia.

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