Limbo

Huxley's first collection of short stories contains seven visionary and satirical tales, which introduces themes that will go on to form the basis of his entire works. The events and the protagonists of these stories, with their personalities falling between the explicit and the elusive, are also rich in parallels and points in common with the life of their author. In The Death of Lully a woman is struck by breast cancer, the disease that killed the young author's mother to whom he was very close; and suicide as that of his brother, recurs in Eupompus Gave Splendour To Art By Numbers. Among all, however, Farcical History Of Richard Greenow takes the form of an autobiography, from the setting to the events described, there are many points of contact between the protagonist and that of the author: like a new Dr Jekyll's alter ego protagonist (and the same Huxley) will face his personal Mr. Hyde, in the staging of the struggle between two different and irreconcilable ways of thinking about literature and civic engagement.