Mortal Coils is a collection of five short fictional pieces written by Aldous Huxley, published in 1921. The book consists of three short stories, a novelette and a play.
The title uses a phrase from Hamlet , Act 3, Scene 1:
[...] To die, to sleep,
To sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,Must give us pause [...]
The stories all concern themselves with some sort of trouble, normally of an amorous nature, and often ending with disappointment.
Based on novelette "The Gioconda Smile":
Based on play Mortal Coils: Play :
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often compared as an inversion counterpart to George Orwell's 1984 (1949).
Jessie Alice Tandy was a British actress. She appeared in over 100 stage productions and had more than 60 roles in film and TV, receiving an Academy Award, four Tony Awards, a BAFTA Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Primetime Emmy Award. She won a Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for playing Blanche DuBois in the original Broadway production of A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948, also winning for The Gin Game and Foxfire. Her films included Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds, Cocoon, Fried Green Tomatoes, and Nobody's Fool. At 80, she became the oldest actress to win the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Driving Miss Daisy.
Curd Gustav Andreas Gottlieb Franz Jürgens was a German-Austrian stage and film actor. He was usually billed in English-speaking films as Curt Jurgens. He was well known for playing Ernst Udet in Des Teufels General. His English-language roles include James Bond villain Karl Stromberg in The Spy Who Loved Me (1977), Éric Carradine in And God Created Woman (1956), and Professor Immanuel Rath in The Blue Angel (1959).
The Genius and the Goddess (1955) is a novel by Aldous Huxley. It is the fictional account of John Rivers, a student physicist in the 1920s who was hired out of college as a laboratory assistant to Henry Maartens.
John William Van Druten was an English playwright and theatre director. He began his career in London, and later moved to America, becoming a U.S. citizen. He was known for his plays of witty and urbane observations of contemporary life and society.
Helmut Käutner was a German film director active mainly in the 1940s and 1950s. He entered the film industry at the end of the Weimar Republic and released his first films as a director in Nazi Germany. Käutner is relatively unknown outside of Germany, although he is considered one of the best filmmakers in German film history. He was one of the most influential film directors of German post-war cinema and became known for his sophisticated literary adaptations.
Celia Lovsky was an Austrian-American actress. She is best known to fans of Star Trek as the Vulcan matriarch T'Pau, and to fans of The Twilight Zone as the aged daughter of an eternally youthful Hollywood actress.
Mortal coil is a quotation from Shakespeare's Hamlet.
The Devils of Loudun is a 1952 non-fiction novel by Aldous Huxley.
Birgitta Valberg was a Swedish actress. She was best known for her work in several Ingmar Bergman films made over 30 years, including the Bergman-produced Paradise Place (1977). For her role in this film, which was directed by Gunnel Lindblom, another member of Bergman's repertory company, she won the award for Best Actress at the 13th Guldbagge Awards.
Collected Short Stories is a collection of short fiction by Aldous Huxley, published in 1957. The book consists of twenty stories compiled from five of Huxley's earlier collections and one from his novel Crome Yellow. It was published by Harper & Row in the US and Chatto & Windus in the UK.
Little Mexican and Other Stories is the third collection of short fiction written by Aldous Huxley, published in 1924. The book consists of four short stories, a novelette and a novella.
A Woman's Vengeance is a 1948 American film noir drama mystery film directed by Zoltán Korda and starring Charles Boyer, Ann Blyth, Jessica Tandy, Cedric Hardwicke, Rachel Kempson, and Mildred Natwick. The screenplay by Aldous Huxley was based on his 1922 novelette The Gioconda Smile. The film was produced and released by Universal Pictures.
Horst Frank was a German film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films between 1955 and 1999. He was born in Lübeck, Germany and died in Heidelberg, Germany.
Eugen York was a German film director. He directed 35 films between 1938 and 1984. He was born in Rybinsk, Russian Empire and died in Berlin, Germany.
Gustav Knuth was a German film actor. He appeared in more than 120 films between 1935 and 1982 and starred in the TV series Alle meine Tiere. He was married to the actress Elisabeth Lennartz.
Michael Kehlmann was an Austrian television film director and theatre director, screenwriter and actor.
The Gioconda Smile is a 1964 Australian television play based on a play by Aldous Huxley. It was filmed in Melbourne.
The following bibliography of Aldous Huxley provides a chronological list of the published works of English writer Aldous Huxley (1894–1963). It includes his fiction and non-fiction, both published during his lifetime and posthumously.