Collected Essays

Aldous Huxley was not simply the author of 'Brave New World ' one of the visionary ' novels' of the century , he was also a superb essayist. In this collection he writes with intelligence and verve about Literature, Politics, Nature, Travel, Love, Sex and Beauty,Painting, Music, History, Psychology, Way of Life.
In the opening essay' Wordsworth in the Tropics' he somewhat cantankerously works to disabuse us of the idyllic Wordsworthian picture of 'nature' He presents a picture of the horrors of non-hospitable nature, and ties Wordsworth 's genius to a particular latitudinal range. In the Tropics Huxley suggests there would not have been those 'intimations of immortality.
Huxley in other context wonders about the meaning of life while in Jaipur contemplating the joy at which the natives collect elephant dung. The thought of Newton and Shakespeare and mankind's mission troubles him for a moment, until he compares the dung- collecters to the dung- makers, and concludes that human beings' nonetheless have something to be proud of when we compare ourselves to our animal cousins.