Dawn and the darkest hour: A study of Aldous Huxley

by George Woodcock

In Dawn and the Darkest Hour , poet and author George Woodcock explores the famously complex life and career of Aldous Huxley. A brilliant and satirical novelist of ideas; a popular journalist and essayist on scientific and political subjects; a prophet of the future ( Brave New World ); a pioneer of psychedelic experimentation ( The Doors of Perception ), Huxley was a man plagued by excessive intellectual curiosity and a withdrawn melancholic nature. In the dramatic range of his characters and the encyclopedic quality of his thought, Huxley expressed some of the most interesting and disturbing commentary about the condition of human beings and their relationship to society. As Woodcock traced the progress of Huxley’s works, he recognized attempts to bring about a synthesis of knowledge “that would give total meaning to existence.” In this striking and encompassing critical biography, Woodcock persuasively asks us to reconsider Huxley’s works as the stages of “a spiritual pilgrimage,” as he demonstrates that Huxley’s entire remarkable oeuvre must be taken as a whole, as a unified “movement out of darkness toward light.” It is a fascinating journey that provides a window into Huxley’s life and character, that shows an intellectual continually striving for knowledge—intuitive, scientific and otherwise—and as such, is certain to renew interest in one of the most the most important and influential minds of the twentieth century. George Woodcock (1912 1995)—award-winning poet, author, essayist and widely known as a literary journalist and historian—published more than 90 titles on history, biography, philosophy, poetry and literary criticism.

295 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Woodcock was born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but moved with his parents to England at an early age, attending Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow and Morley College. Though his family was quite poor, Woodcock had the opportunity to go to Oxford University on a partial scholarship; however, he turned down the chance because he would have had to become a member of the clergy.Instead, he took a job as a clerk at the Great Western Railway and it was there that he first became interested in anarchism (specifically libertarian socialism). He was to remain an anarchist for the rest of his life, writing several books on the subject.

It was during these years that he met several prominent literary figures, including T. S. Eliot and Aldous Huxley and became good friends with George Orwell despite ideological disagreements. Woodcock later wrote The Crystal Spirit (1966), a critical study of Orwell and his work which won a Governor General's Award.

Woodcock spent World War II working on a farm, as a conscientious objector. At Camp Angel in Oregon, a camp for conscientious objectors, he was a founder of the Untide Press, which sought to bring poetry to the public in an inexpensive but attractive format. Following the war, he returned to Canada, eventually settling in Vancouver, British Columbia. In 1955, he took a post in the English department of the University of British Columbia, where he stayed until the 1970s. Around this time he started to write more prolifically, producing several travel books and collections of poetry, as well as the works on anarchism for which he is best known.

Towards the end of his life, Woodcock became increasingly interested in what he saw as the plight of Tibetans. He travelled to India, studied Buddhism, became friends with the Dalai Lama and established the Tibetan Refugee Aid Society. He and his wife Inge also established Canada India Village Aid, which sponsors self-help projects in rural India. Both organizations exemplify Woodcock's ideal of voluntary cooperation between peoples across national boundaries.

George and Inge also established a program to support professional Canadian writers. The Woodcock Fund, which began in 1989, provides financial assistance to writers in mid-book-project who face an unforeseen financial need that threatens the completion of their book. The Fund is available to writers of fiction, creative non-fiction, plays, and poetry. The Woodcocks helped create an endowment for the program in excess of two million dollars. The Woodcock Fund program is administered by the Writers’ Trust of Canada and has distributed $887,273 to 180 Canadian writers, as of March 2012.

Reviews

[Mark · Rating 3 out of 5]

Interesting read because it describes plot and characters form his lesser known earlier work, along with analyses of where his philosophical development was at the time of their creation. Because I consider Huxley one of the more interesting, and important, 20th C. writers, I only owe it to him to get more familiar with those works outside the normal discourse (excluding: Doors of Perception, Island, Brave New World, The & Perennial Philosphy.)I can imagine a day when ideas from Island will no longer be a figment of his imagination, but actual social developments- or at least, some of its platform will become accepted social wisdom rather than marginalized cynical despair at society's current lack of common sense.

[Marina · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was really useful for research on Huxley's life in relation to his work, but Woodcock was so pedantic it was just unbearable (assuming your readers speak French is a bit of a d*ck move).