Happy 120th birthday to Aldous Huxley, born July 26, 1894!
“There are things known and there are things unknown and in between are the doors of perception.”
-Aldous Huxley
Aldous Huxley is widely known as the author of Brave New World, The Doors of Perception, and Island. Did you know he was also the grandson of scientist Thomas Henry Huxley, a Hollywood screenwriter who wrote the screenplay for Pride and Prejudice (1940), lectured on the “Human Potential” at The Esalen Institute in the 1960’s, and was once Eric Arthur Blair’s French teacher at Eton College before Eric went on to write 1984 and Animal Farm with the pen name George Orwell?
Special Collections at Stanford University Libraries has a sketchbook, which Huxley used when he was 17 years old. Dated March 7-July 6, 1912, it is possible that Huxley brought the sketchbook along with him during his travels through Marburg, Germany before attending Oxford University in the fall of 1913.
![Steve Schneider [photographer unknown].](https://library.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/styles/150xh/public/blog/image/shstropical.jpg?itok=BioNX2H6 "Steve Schneider [photographer unknown]. -- Stephen Henry Schneider Papers (SC1053). Dept. of Special Collections, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.")
