xx Introduction 



To Engel he wrote: "You are really the most perti- 

 naciously persuasive of men. When you first wrote to me, 

 I said I would have nothing whatever to do with any- 

 thing you might please to say about me, that I had a 

 profound objection to write about myself, and that I could 

 not see what business the public had with my private 

 life. I think I even expressed to you my complete sym- 

 pathy with Dr. Johnson's desire to take Boswell's life 

 when he heard of the latter's occupation with his biography. 



" Undeterred by all this, you put before me the alterna- 

 tive of issuing something that may be all wrong, unless 

 I furnish you with something authoritative; I do not say 

 all right, because autobiographies are essentially works of 

 fiction, whatever biographies may be. So I yield, and 

 send you what follows, in the hope that those who find it 

 to be mere egotistical gossip will blame you and not me." 



The Autobiography was written, then, in 1889, six 

 years before Huxley's death. It was published in Method 

 and Results (1893), which is volume one of Huxley's 

 Collected Essays. Huxley was often urged to write a 

 longer sketch of his life, but seemed to think it not worth 

 the time. His best autobiography is to be found in the 

 letters published in The Life and Letters of Thomas 

 Henry Huxley, by his son, Leonard Huxley (American 

 edition, 2 volumes, New York, 1901). 



2. LETTERS. These letters, dating from 1852 to 1892, 

 are really a continuation of the Autobiography, no form 

 of literature being as truly autobiographic as the letter. 

 They present Huxley the man, Huxley the scientist, 

 Huxley the public-spirited citizen. The frank expression 

 of his hopes and ideals, the impressions made upon him 

 by the funerals of the Duke of Wellington and Tenny- 

 son, his immediate recognition of the significance of 

 Darwin's great work, his interesting description of the 



