SOURCE: “The Use of Irony in Aldous Huxley's Short Fiction,” in On Poets and Poetry, edited by Dr. James Hogg, Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik, 1984 pp. 181-214.

In the following essay, Schubert maintains Huxley's short fiction is mainly concerned with humans' inescapable predestinatio, and that the predominant stylistic device he uses to express this is irony.

Huxley began his literary career in 1916 with a volume of poems called The Burning Wheel. Four years later Limbo, his first volume of short stories was published, followed by his first novel Crome Yellow in 1921. During the period from 1920 to 1930 Huxley tried all literary genres: he wrote poems, short stories, novels, essays, dramas and travel books. The predominant genre in the 1920s, however, was short fiction, and Limbo was followed by four more volumes of short stories, Mortal Coils (1922), Little Mexican (1924), Two or Three Graces (1926) and Brief Candles (1930). In these stories...