Complete essays

This is the opening pair of a planned five-volume edition gathering every essay Aldous Huxley wrote, a project that took several years to assemble. Together the two volumes cover the busiest stretch of his writing life. The first opens with pieces he produced for Gilbert Murray's Athenaeum, alongside music essays written for the New Westminster Gazette. The second runs through the 1920s and contains "Jesting Pilate," his much-debated writing on India and the British Empire, plus a newly located series on music.

The subjects range widely, from close readings of art and architecture to analyses of politics, history, science and religion. Huxley writes allusively and wittily, with the doubting eye of a well-educated Englishman from the upper middle class who was quick to notice pretension. Running through the pieces are his fascination with the customs and conventions of European civilisation, his unease at the possible breakdown of the European political order, and his interest in how science and technology were reshaping England, France, Germany and the United States after the First World War.

Many of these concerns carry over into the satirical novels he produced between the wars, especially Point Counter Point and Brave New World. Readers who know those books will find the essays a useful companion to them, and those new to Huxley will find a sharp, far-ranging account of the modern mind.