Aldous Huxley in the context of "Brave New World"

In contemporary literary studies, a theme is a main topic, subject, or message within a narrative. Themes are ideas that are central to a story, which can often be summed in a single abstract noun (for example, love, death, betrayal, nostalgia, or parenthood) or noun phrase (for example, coming of age, humans in conflict with technology, seeking spirituality in the modern era, or the dangers of unchecked ambition). A theme may be exemplified by the actions, utterances, or thoughts of characters, as in the theme of loneliness in John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men, wherein many of the characters seem isolated and long for community with others. It may or may not differ from the thesis—the text's or author's implied worldview.

A story may have several themes and generally longer works, such as novels, plays, films, or television series, do. Themes often explore historically common or cross-culturally recognizable ideas, such as ethical questions, and are usually implied rather than stated explicitly. An example of this would be whether one should live a seemingly better life, at the price of giving up parts of one's humanity, which is a theme in Aldous Huxley's Brave New World. Along with plot, character, setting, and style, theme is considered one of the components of fiction. Themes can be divided into two categories: a work's thematic concept is what readers "think the work is about" and its thematic statement being "what the work says about the subject".

Oxford Poetry is a literary magazine based in Oxford, England. It is currently edited by Luke Allan. The magazine is published by Partus Press.

Founded in 1910 by Basil Blackwell, its editors have included Dorothy L. Sayers, Aldous Huxley, Robert Graves, Vera Brittain, Kingsley Amis, Anthony Thwaite, John Fuller and Bernard O'Donoghue.

Island is a 1962 utopian manifesto and novel by English writer Aldous Huxley, the author's final work before his death in 1963. Although it has a plot, the plot largely serves to further conceptual explorations rather than setting up and resolving conventional narrative tension.

It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 dystopian novel Brave New World. The ideas that would become Island can be seen in a foreword he wrote in 1946 to a new edition of Brave New World:

Nancy Clara Cunard (10 March 1896 – 17 March 1965) was a British writer, heiress and political activist. She was born into the British upper class, and devoted much of her life to fighting racism and fascism. She became a muse to some of the 20th century's most distinguished writers and artists, including Wyndham Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Tristan Tzara, Ezra Pound and Louis Aragon—who were among her lovers—as well as Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Constantin Brâncuși, Langston Hughes, Man Ray and William Carlos Williams. MI5 documents reveal that she was involved with Indian diplomat, orator, and statesman V. K. Krishna Menon.

In later years she suffered from mental illness, and her physical health deteriorated. When she died in the Hôpital Cochin, Paris, she weighed only 26 kilograms (57 pounds; 4 stone 1 pound).

Jiddu Krishnamurti (/ˈdʒɪduː ˌkrɪʃnəˈmʊərti/ JID-oo KRISH-nə-MOOR-tee; 11 May 1895 – 17 February 1986) was an Indian spiritual figure, speaker, and writer. Adopted by members of the Theosophical Society as a child, Krishnamurti was raised to fill the mantle of the prophesied World Teacher, a role tasked with aiding humankind's spiritual evolution. In 1922, he began to suffer from painful, seizure-like mystical episodes that would produce a lasting change in his perception of reality. In 1929, he broke from the Theosophy movement and disbanded the Order of the Star in the East which had been formed around him. He spent the rest of his life speaking to groups and individuals around the world, hoping to contribute a radical transformation of mankind.

Krishnamurti asserted that "truth is a pathless land" and advised against following any doctrine, discipline, teacher, guru, or authority, including himself. Nonetheless, during his life he tried to share his insights in 'the teachings', urging for a state without conceptual deliberations and thought. In Krishnamurti's perception, such a righteousness was only possible through the practice of passive or choiceless awareness, which he called the essence of "true meditation" in contrast to contrived techniques. He gained a wider recognition in the 1950s, after Aldous Huxley had introduced him to his mainstream publisher and the publication of The First and Last Freedom (1954). Many of his talks have been published since, among them Commentaries on Living (1956–60) and Krishnamurti's Notebook (written 1961-62).