18 OCTOBER 1935, Page 38

ALDOUS HUXLEY By Alexander Henderson

Mr. Alexander Henderson's study of Mr. Aldous Huxley (Chatto and Windus, 7s. 6d.) will be more valuable to those who are unfamiliar with Mr. Huxley's work than to those who are already well acquainted with it. It offers an excellent and systematic introductory guide to Mr. Huxley's fiction, essays and stories, with chapters on his life and his general thought, and very thoroughly and fairly describes his achieve- ments in the various literary media which he has adopted. To those who do not require such a guide, Mr. Henderson has not much to offer. Little of his criticism is either novel or profound, he 'is—rather disastrously in dealing with a writer like Mr. Huxley—somewhat insensitive to the diversity of the verbal functions of language, and his infinite reverence for his subject sometimes proves destructive of objective analysis. A useful and otherwise complete bibliography omits to record the introduction contributed by Mr. Huxley to Mr. Alderton Pink's A Realist Looks at Democracy (Berm, 1980).