Aldous Huxley
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English author and the most famous member of the worldwide known Huxley family. He was born on 26 July 1894 in Godalming, UK and died on 22 November 1963 at the age of 69 in Los Angeles, USA. His works can be found in all three main literary genres (poetry, drama and prose). His most famous work is the 1931 dystopian novel Brave New World. The setting is London in the year of 2540 AD. Brave New World anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of futurology. The novel brought Huxley worldwide prominence and still today is one of the most influential dystopian novels of all times. Almost all members of Huxley's family were successful and famous or at least important people. His father Leonard Huxley, for instance, was a writer and schoolmaster, while his mother Julia Arnold founded the Prior's Field School in Aldous Huxley's native town Godalming. Aldous' grandfather Thomas Henry Huxley, was a zoologist and controversialist and was called "Darwin's Bulldog". Aldous' mother died when he was 14 years old. Until then she educated him and taught him everything he had to know to be accepted in Eton College, where he later became a French teacher. Among his pupils were Stephen Runciman and George Orwell, who might have been inspired by Huxley, writing his 1948 dystopia 1984, which was also set in London. Aldous Huxley died on 22 Novemeber 1963, just a couple of hours after John F. Kennedey, which was the reason why Huxley's death was not as present in the media as it probably would have been without John F. Kennedy's death. His name will always be associated with Brave New World, which has been one of the greatest novels of 20-century English literature.
Sources:
http://www.online-literature.com/aldous_huxley/
http://somaweb.org/w/huxbio.html