Christopher Isherwood, born in Cheshire, England, in 1904, wrote both novels and nonfiction. He was a lifelong friend of W.H. Auden and wrote several plays with him, including Dog Beneath the Skin and The Ascent of F6. He lived in Germany from 1928 until 1933 and his writings during this period described the political and social climate of pre-Hitler Germany. Isherwood immigrated to the United States in 1939 and became a U.S. citizen in 1946. He lived in California, working on film scripts and adapting plays for television. The musical Cabaret is based on several of Isherwood's stories and on his play, I Am a Camera. His other works include Mr. Norris Changes Trains, about life in Germany… in the early 1930s; Down There on a Visit, an autobiographical novel; and Where Joy Resides, published after his death in 1986.
Aldous Huxley was born on July 26, 1894, in Surrey, England, into a distinguished scientific and literary family; his grandfather was the noted scientist and writer, T.H. Huxley. Following an eye illness at age 16 that resulted in near-blindness, Huxley abandoned hope of a career in medicine and turned instead to literature, attending Oxford University and graduating with honors. While at Oxford, he published two volumes of poetry. Crome Yellow, his first novel, was published in 1927 followed by Antic Hay, Those Barren Leaves, and Point Counter Point. His most famous novel, Brave New World, published in 1932, is a science fiction classic about a futuristic society controlled by technology.… In all, Huxley produced 47 works during his long career, In 1947, Huxley moved with his family to southern California. During the 1950s, he experimented with mescaline and LSD. Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell, both works of nonfiction, were based on his experiences while taking mescaline under supervision. In 1959, Aldous Huxley received the Award of Merit for the Novel from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He died on November 22, 1963.