Novelist and essayist Aldous Huxley has been described by New Statesman contributor V. S. Pritchett as "that rare being--the prodigy, the educable young man, the perennial asker of unusual questions." Defining Huxley as a hybrid "artist-educator," Pritchett called the author "an extraordinary filler-in of the huge gaps in one's mind." Over the course of his long career, Huxley became known as a prolific author capable of provoking deep thought in his readers. He published more than thirty nonfiction pieces that ranged from travelogues to social criticism to examinations of literature. He wrote plays, short stories, poetry, and screenplays. Despite Huxley's facility and prolific output in these various genres, Concise Dictionary of British Literary Biography contributor Jerry W. Carlson assessed that "above all else, [Huxley] was a novelist." Novels such as Crome Yellow, Point Counter Point, and Brave New World--the work with which he is most widely identified--earned Huxley his greatest fame and secured his place among the influential writers of the twentieth century.
