- Mortal Coils
-
1st edition (publ. Chatto & Windus)
Mortal Coils is a collection of five short fictional pieces written by Aldous Huxley in 1922.
The title uses a phrase from Hamlet, Act 3, Scene 1:
- ... To die, to sleep,
- To sleep, perchance to dream; aye, there's the rub,
- For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come,
- When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
- Must give us pause ...
The stories all concern themselves with some sort of trouble, normally of an amorous nature, and often ending with disappointment.
The stories
- "The Gioconda Smile" is a short murder-mystery story,[1] which Huxley later adapted into a 1947 film called A Woman's Vengeance.[2][3]
- "Permutations Among the Nightingales" is a play concerning the amorous problems encountered by various patrons of a certain establishment.
- "The Tillotson Banquet" tells of an old artist who was thought to be dead, and is "rediscovered", and an honorary dinner that is organised for him.
- "Green Tunnels" is about the boredom of a young girl on holiday with her family. She develops a romantic fantasy, and is ultimately disillusioned.
- "Nuns at Luncheon" is a second-hand story told of a nun falling in love. The story mocks the writer's process, a concept Huxley used in his novel Crome Yellow.
References
Works by Aldous Huxley Novel Crome Yellow (1921) • Antic Hay (1923) • Those Barren Leaves (1925) • Point Counter Point (1928) • Brave New World (1932) • Eyeless in Gaza (1936) • After Many a Summer (1939) • Time Must Have a Stop (1944) • Ape and Essence (1948) • The Genius and the Goddess (1955) • Island (1962)
Short story "Happily Ever After" • "Eupompus Gave Splendour to Art by Numbers" • "Cynthia" • "The Bookshop" • "The Death of Lully" • "Sir Hercules" • "The Gioconda Smile" • "The Tillotson Banquet" • "Green Tunnels" • "Nuns at Luncheon" • "Little Mexican" • "Hubert and Minnie" • "Fard" • "The Portrait" • "Young Archimedes" • "Half Holiday" • "The Monocle" • "Fairy Godmother" • "Chawdron" • "The Rest Cure" • "The Claxtons" • "After the Fireworks" • "Jacob's Hands: A Fable" (published 1997) co-written with Christopher Isherwood
Short story collection Limbo (1920) • Mortal Coils (1922) • Little Mexican (US title: Young Archimedes) (1924) • Two or Three Graces (1926) • Brief Candles (1930) • Collected Short Stories (1957)
Poetry The Burning Wheel (1916) • Jonah (1917) • The Defeat of Youth (1918) • Leda (1920) • Arabia Infelix (1929) • The Cicadias and Other Poems (1931) • Collected Poetry (1971)
Travel writing Along the Road (1925) • Jesting Pilate (1926) • Beyond the Mexique Bay (1934)
Essay collection On the Margin (1923) • Essays New and Old (1926) • Proper Studies (1927) • Do What You Will (1929) • Vulgarity in Literature (1930) • Music at Night (1931) • Texts and Pretexts (1932) • The Olive Tree (1936) • Ends and Means (1937) • Words and their Meanings (1940) • Science, Liberty and Peace (1946) • Themes and Variations (1950) • The Doors of Perception (1954) • Adonis and the Alphabet (US title: Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow) (1956) • Heaven and Hell (1956) • Collected Essays (1958) • Brave New World Revisited (1958) • Literature and Science (1963) • The Human Situation: 1959 Lectures at Santa Barbara (1977) • Moksha: Writings on Psychedelics and the Visionary Experience (1999)
Screenplay Pride and Prejudice (1940) • Madame Curie (uncredited, 1943) • Jane Eyre (1944) • A Woman's Vengeance (1947) • Prelude to Fame (1950) • Alice in Wonderland (uncredited, 1951)
Non-fiction Play The Discovery (based on Frances Sheridan) (1924) • The World of Light (1931) • The Gioconda Smile (play version, also known as Mortal Coils) (1948) • The Genius and the Goddess (play version, with Betty Wendel) (1957) • The Ambassador of Captripedia (1965) • Now More Than Ever (1997)Children's book The Crows of Pearblossom (1944, published 1967) • The Travails and Tribulations of Geoffrey Peacock (1967)Other book The Art of Seeing (1942) •• Selected Letters (2007)
This article about a collection of short stories is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
