Huxley, Laura Archera 1914-2007
Huxley, Laura Archera 1914-2007
OBITUARY NOTICE—
See index for CA sketch: Born November 2, 1914, in Turin, Italy; died of cancer, December 13, 2007, in Los Angeles, CA. Violinist, therapist, nonprofit director, biographer, and author. Huxley performed as a concert violinist for more than ten years and as a lay therapist for nearly twenty years, and held various other jobs between 1939 and 1950. However, she was probably best known as the wife of acclaimed novelist and philosopher Aldous Huxley. Though their marriage lasted only seven years (several of which spanned the growth of the "alternative consciousness" movement of the 1960s, in which the couple reportedly participated with care and without regret), she devoted decades of her life to preserving his memory and his writings. One of her objectives was to see her husband's classic novel Brave New World adapted as a feature film. In 1968, five years after his death, she wrote This Timeless Moment: A Personal View of Aldous Huxley, which was updated under a slightly different title in 1991. In 1977 or 1978, while working as a lay therapist, Laura Huxley began to make a name for herself as the founder and director of Our Ultimate Investment, a nonprofit organization dedicated to juvenile welfare initiatives and classes in life skills. She particularly wanted to help teenagers manage or prevent unplanned pregnancies. Huxley was the coauthor of The Child of Your Dreams: Approaching Conception and Pregnancy with Inner Peace and Reverence for Life (1987). Some earlier self-help books were You Are Not the Target: A Practical Manual of How to Cope with a World of Bewildering Change (1963), based in part on New Age beliefs that had begun to emerge in the "alternative" sixties, and a sequel, Between Heaven and Earth: Recipes for Living and Loving (1975).
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
PERIODICALS
Chicago Tribune, December 15, 2007, sec. 4, p. 11.
Los Angeles, Times, December 15, 2007, p. B8.
New York Times, December 19, 2007, p. A29.
Times (London, England), December 17, 2007, p. 50.