 Dust-jacket from the first edition | |
| Author | Aldous Huxley |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1936 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 619 pp |
| ISBN | 978-0061724893 |
Eyeless in Gaza is a novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1936. It is an account of the life of a socialite named Anthony Beavis between the 1890s and 1936.
The title is taken from a phrase in John Milton's Samson Agonistes :
The title of the book, like Milton's poem, recalls the biblical story of Samson; he was captured by the Philistines, his eyes were burned out and he was taken to Gaza, where he was forced to work at grinding grain in a mill.
Huxley's biographer, Sybille Bedford, whom Huxley knew (they were neighbours in the south of France), says in her fictional memoir Jigsaw that two of the novel's characters – Mary Amberley, a drug addict, and her daughter – were partly inspired by Bedford and her mother, who was addicted to morphine.
The novel focuses on four periods in the life of a socialite named Anthony Beavis between the 1890s (when he is a young boy) and 1936 – but not in chronological order. It describes Beavis's experiences as he goes through school, college and various romantic affairs; the meaninglessness of upper-class life during these times; and Beavis's gradual disillusionment with high society, brought to a head by a friend's suicide. He then begins to seek a source of meaning, and seems to find it when he discovers pacifism and then mysticism. [1]
The English journalist Simon Heffer has called the novel Huxley's best book and his only "great novel". According to Heffer, the book both harks back to Huxley's early satires and links to the more serious and philosophical concerns of his later novels. Formally, the novel uses a modernist stream of consciousness but based in fact, unlike the novels of Woolf, Proust and Joyce, whose narrators' memories are unreliable. Heffer writes that the novel explores the tension between wartime and pacifism in a particularly productive way, that Huxley is a "sophisticated, original English man of letters" who deserves a reevaluation, and that this novel is a good place to start. [2] In Strictly English, Heffer's guide to writing clearly, he recommends Eyeless in Gaza as containing examples of what he considers to be Huxley's masterful use of parentheses (both brackets and dashes) and of the single dash. [3] The blogger Josh Ronsen has created a table of the novel's events, rearranged in chronological order. [4]
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including novels and non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.
An essay is, generally, a piece of writing that gives the author's own argument, but the definition is vague, overlapping with those of a letter, a paper, an article, a pamphlet, and a short story. Essays have been sub-classified as formal and informal: formal essays are characterized by "serious purpose, dignity, logical organization, length," whereas the informal essay is characterized by "the personal element, humor, graceful style, rambling structure, unconventionality or novelty of theme," etc.
The Doors of Perception is an autobiographical book written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1954, it elaborates on his psychedelic experience under the influence of mescaline in May 1953. Huxley recalls the insights he experienced, ranging from the "purely aesthetic" to "sacramental vision", and reflects on their philosophical and psychological implications. In 1956, he published Heaven and Hell, another essay which elaborates these reflections further. The two works have since often been published together as one book; the title of both comes from William Blake's 1793 book The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
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).
Measure for Measure is a play by William Shakespeare, believed to have been written in 1603 or 1604 and first performed in 1604, according to available records. It was published in the First Folio of 1623.
Point Counter Point is a novel by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1928. It is Huxley's longest novel, and was notably more complex and serious than his earlier fiction.
Samson Agonistes is a tragic closet drama by John Milton. It appeared with the publication of Milton's Paradise Regained in 1671, as the title page of that volume states: "Paradise Regained / A Poem / In IV Books / To Which Is Added / Samson Agonistes". It is generally thought that Samson Agonistes was begun around the same time as Paradise Regained but was completed after the larger work, possibly very close to the date of publishing, but there is no certainty.
Henry FitzGerald Heard, commonly called Gerald Heard, was a British-born American historian, science writer and broadcaster, public lecturer, educator, and philosopher. He wrote many articles and over 35 books.
The Huxley family is a British family; several of its members have excelled in science, medicine, arts and literature. The family also includes members who occupied senior positions in the public service of the United Kingdom.
Literature and Science, published in September 1963, was Aldous Huxley's last book - he died two months after it was published. In it, he strives to harmonize the scientific and artistic realms. He argues that language is what divides the two realms and makes communication between them difficult. He analyzes the ways in which scientists and fiction writers use language differently to achieve their desired effects. Although he concedes that many differences in language use are inevitable, he urges both camps to seek mutual understanding and appreciation. He directs his argument primarily to fiction writers: "Whether we like it or not,” he tells them, “ours is the Age of Science."
Beyond the Mexique Bay is a book of travel essays by Aldous Huxley, first published in 1934. In it, he describes his experiences traveling through the Caribbean to Guatemala and southern Mexico in 1933. The work is named for a line in Andrew Marvell's poem, "Bermudas."
The Albany, or correctly, Albany, is an apartment complex in Piccadilly, London. The three-storey mansion was built in the 1770s and divided into apartments in 1802.
Eyeless In Gaza is an English musical duo of Martyn Bates and Peter Becker, based in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. They have described their music as "veer[ing] crazily from filmic ambiance to rock and pop, industrial funk to avant-folk styles." Formed in 1980, the group went into hiatus in 1987, re-emerging in 1993.
Sybille Bedford, OBE was a German-born English writer of non-fiction and semi-autobiographical fiction books. She was a recipient of the Golden PEN Award.
John William Navin Sullivan (1886–1937) was an English popular science writer and literary journalist, and the author of a study of Beethoven. He wrote some of the earliest non-technical accounts of Albert Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, and was known personally to many important writers in London in the 1920s, including Aldous Huxley, John Middleton Murry, Wyndham Lewis, Aleister Crowley and T. S. Eliot.
Seccotine is a brand of refined liquid fish glue first made in Ireland.
Eyeless in Gaza may refer to:
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.
Eva Herrmann was a German-American painter, illustrator, draftsperson, and caricaturist.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
