Laura Huxley | |
---|---|
Born | Laura Archera November 2, 1911 Turin, Italy |
Died | December 13, 2007 Hollywood, Los Angeles, USA |
(aged 96)
Occupation | Musician, author, psychological counselor and lecturer |
Nationality | Italian-American |
Period | 1963–1987 |
Genre | Self-help, biography |
Spouse | Aldous Huxley |
Laura Huxley (née Archera) (November 2, 1911 – December 13, 2007) was an Italian-American musician, author, psychological counselor and lecturer, and the wife of author Aldous Huxley.
Laura Archera was born in Turin, Italy on November 2, 1911. She began playing the violin at the age of ten, studying in Berlin, Paris and Rome, where she earned a Professor of Music degree. She also studied at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, played in a major symphony orchestra, played before the Queen of Italy at the age of 14 , and performed at Carnegie Hall in her teens.
In 1949, she was working as a freelance documentary filmmaker. According to her obituary in the Los Angeles Times, Archera called philosopher and author Aldous Huxley at home, saying that John Huston had promised to finance her proposed documentary film on the Palio di Siena if she could get Huxley to agree to write a screenplay. Archera then became close friends with Huxley and his first wife Maria, who died in 1955. In 1956, Archera married Huxley. She wrote several self-help books concerning human relations, including You Are Not the Target (1963) with a foreword written by Aldous Huxley.
After his death in 1963, she wrote This Timeless Moment: a personal view of Aldous Huxley (1968), a book describing life with her husband.
In 1977 she founded Children: Our Ultimate Investment, also known as "Our Ultimate Investment" or just OUI, a non-profit organization dedicated to the nurturing of the possible human. The organization sponsored a four-day conference also entitled Children: Our Ultimate Investment.