Between the Wars - Bradshaw, David

. .

Résumé :
Newly published essays and letters, edited and introduced by David Bradshaw, showing Huxley's transformation from a scourge of the masses in the 1920s to their compassionate spokeman by the 1930s, and including writings on art and literature, and letters to H.L. Mencken and H.G. Wells....

Biographie:
Aldous Leonard Huxley (1894 - 1963) was an English writer, novelist, philosopher and prominent member of the Huxley family. He graduated from Balliol College at the University of Oxford with a first class honours in English literature. The author of nearly fifty books, he was best known for his novels including Brave New World, set in a dystopian future...

Sommaire:
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....