Editing Aldous Huxley (section)

=== Contact with the Bloomsbury Group ===
[[File:SomeBloomsburymembers.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|left|[[Bloomsbury Group]] members (July 1915). Left to right: [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]] (age 42); Maria Nys (age 15), who would become Mrs Huxley; [[Lytton Strachey]] (age 35); [[Duncan Grant]] (age 30); and [[Vanessa Bell]] (age 36)]]
During the [[World War I|First World War]], Huxley spent much of his time at [[Garsington Manor]] near Oxford, home of [[Lady Ottoline Morrell]], working as a farm labourer. While at the Manor, he met several [[Bloomsbury Group]] figures, including [[Bertrand Russell]], [[Alfred North Whitehead]],<ref>{{citation |last=Weber |first=Michel |author-link=Michel Weber |url=https://www.academia.edu/3268912 |title=On Religiousness and Religion. Huxley's Reading of Whitehead's Religion in the Making in the Light of James' Varieties of Religious Experience |editor1-first=Jerome |editor1-last=Meckier |editor2-first=Bernfried |editor2-last=Nugel |newspaper=Aldous Huxley Annual. A Journal of Twentieth-Century Thought and Beyond |volume=5 |place=Münster |publisher=LIT |date=March 2005 |pages=117–132}}.</ref> and [[Clive Bell]]. Later, in ''Crome Yellow'' (1921), he caricatured the Garsington lifestyle. Jobs were very scarce, but in 1919, [[John Middleton Murry]] was reorganising the ''[[Athenaeum (British magazine)|Athenaeum]]'' and invited Huxley to join the staff. He accepted immediately, and quickly married the Belgian refugee Maria Nys (1899–1955), also at Garsington.<ref>{{citation |title=The Huxleys |first=Ronald W |last=Clark |publisher=William Heinemann |place=London |year=1968}}.</ref> They lived with their young son in Italy part of the time during the 1920s, where Huxley would visit his friend [[D. H. Lawrence]]. Following Lawrence's death in 1930 (he and Maria were present at his death in Provence), Huxley edited Lawrence's letters (1932).<ref>{{cite book |first=George |last=Woodcock |year=2007 |title=Dawn and the Darkest Hour: A Study of Aldous Huxley |page=240 |publisher=Black Rose Books}}.</ref> Very early in 1929, in London, Huxley met [[Gerald Heard]], a writer and broadcaster, philosopher and interpreter of contemporary science. Heard was nearly five years older than Huxley, and introduced him to a variety of profound ideas, subtle interconnections, and various emerging spiritual and psychotherapy methods.<ref>Murray, Nicholas (4 June 2009). Aldous Huxley: An English Intellectual. Little, Brown Book Group. p. 220. ISBN 978-0-7481-1231-9.</ref>

Works of this period included novels about the dehumanising aspects of [[scientific progress]], (his [[magnum opus]] ''Brave New World''), and on pacifist themes (''[[Eyeless in Gaza (novel)|Eyeless in Gaza]]'').<ref>{{cite journal |last= Vitoux |first= Peter |year= 1972 |title= Structure and Meaning in Aldous Huxley's 'Eyeless in Gaza' |journal= The Yearbook of English Studies |volume= 2 |pages= 212–224 |doi= 10.2307/3506521 |jstor= 3506521 }}</ref> In ''Brave New World'', set in a dystopian London, Huxley portrays a society operating on the principles of mass production and [[Classical conditioning|Pavlovian conditioning]].<ref>{{cite journal |last= Firchow |first= Peter |year= 1975 |title= Science and Conscience in Huxley's "Brave New World" |journal= Contemporary Literature |volume= 16 |issue= 3 |pages= 301–316 |doi= 10.2307/1207404 |jstor= 1207404 }}</ref> Huxley was strongly influenced by [[F. Matthias Alexander]], on whom he based a character in ''Eyeless in Gaza''.<ref>{{cite journal |last= Watts Estrich |first= Helen |year= 1939 |title= Jesting Pilate Tells the Answer: Aldous Huxley |journal= The Sewanee Review |volume= 47 |issue= 1 |pages= 63–81 |jstor= 27535511 }}</ref>

[[file:Aldous Huxley by Low.jpg|thumb|Aldous Huxley by [[David Low (cartoonist)|Low]] (1933)]]

During this period, Huxley began to write and edit non-fiction works on pacifist issues, including ''[[Ends and Means]]'' (1937), ''An Encyclopedia of Pacifism'', and ''Pacifism and Philosophy'', and was an active member of the [[Peace Pledge Union|Peace Pledge Union (PPU)]].<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.ppu.org.uk/people/huxley.html |publisher=Peace Pledge Union |title=Aldous Huxley |access-date=15 May 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110606072731/http://www.ppu.org.uk/people/huxley.html |archive-date=6 June 2011 |url-status=live}}</ref>