6. Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley is surprisingly older than popular perception believes. Born in 1894 in Godalming England, he helped inspire many of the figures spoken about in this list. Huxley was a very well-educated man and attended Eton College before gaining a place at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. His most notable works include The Doors of Perception, Brave New World, Island, and The Perennial Philosophy.
In 1937, Huxley moved to Los Angeles with his wife, son, and friend. It was here, in the circles he ran, that he solidified his persona as a humanist, satirist, and pacifist. He also grew increasingly interested in spiritual subjects such as philosophical mysticism, and parapsychology. Furthermore, he grew to be a very charitable person. He earned a lot of money as a screenwriter and used a lot of it transport left-wing and Jewish artist and writer refugees from Hitler’s Germany to the USA.
In the spring of 1953, Aldous Huxley had his first experience with psychedelic drugs. The first drug he used was Mescaline, a hallucinogenic comparable to LSD and magic mushrooms. Dr Humphry Osmond, a British psychiatrist, supervised Huxley. Huxley hoped that using these drugs could expand consciousness and lead to a greater degree of awareness and enlightenment. He believed drugs could break down the barriers of the ego, and draw man closer to spiritual enlightenment. Huxley recounted his experience that afternoon in his text The Doors of Perception, published 1954. A great read by the way!
In 1937 he moved to Los Angeles and remained there until his death in November 1963, aged sixty-nine. He died the same day as author C. S. Lewis. Both of their deaths, sadly, were overshadowed by the assassination of John F. Kennedy the same day. Huxley’s ashes are in a family grave in the Watts Cemetery, in Compton, Surrey, in England. He has left his legacy in literature in a variety of ways. Stunningly, throughout his life he has been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature nine times; sadly, however, he never won. In 1939, however, he received the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. In 1959, he received an American Academy of Arts and Letters Award of Merit for Brave New World. Finally, in 1962, the Royal Society of Literature made him a Companion of Literature.