An Intimate History of Evolution: The Story of the Huxley Family

by Alison Bashford

'A masterpiece of biography ... a vivid account of a family at the heart of some of the great cultural shifts of the modern era' John Gray, New Statesman'The whole of British intellectual life seems accessible through some branch of this sprawling family tree' The GuardianIn his early twenties, poor, racked with depression, stranded in the Coral Sea on the seemingly endless survey mission of HMS Rattlesnake , hopelessly in love with the young Englishwoman Henrietta Heathorn, Thomas Henry Huxley was a nobody. And yet together he and Henrietta would return to London and go on to found one of the great intellectual and scientific dynasties of their age.The Huxley family through four generations profoundly shaped how we all see ourselves. In innumerable fields observing both nature and culture, they worked as scientists, novelists, mystics, film-makers, poets and - perhaps above all - as public lecturers, educators and explainers.Their speciality was evolution in all its forms - at the grandest level of species, deep time, the Earth, and at the most personal and intimate. They shaped great organizations - the Natural History Museum, Imperial College, the London Zoo, UNESCO, the World Wildlife Fund - and they shaped fundamentally how we see ourselves, as individuals and as a species, one among many.But perhaps their greatest subject was themselves. Alison Bashford's marvellously engaging and original new book interweaves the Huxleys' momentous public achievements with their private triumphs and tragedies. The result is the history of a family, but also a history of humanity grappling with its place in nature. This book shows how much we owe - for better or worse - to the unceasing curiosity, self-absorption and enthusiasms of a small, strange group of men and women.'This is history with the engaging intimacy of a novel. Bashford brilliantly marries intellectual history with the story of four generations in a literary tour de force' Professor Jim Secord, author of Visions of Science

Genres: Science, Biography, Nonfiction, History, Biography Memoir, Evolution, Audiobook

529 pages, Hardcover

Published September 29, 2022

About the author

Alison Bashford is Director of the Laureate Centre for the History of Population at the University of New South Wales.

Reviews

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

In some ways a rag tag of various focuses and ideas, but I think that’s the book’s strength. It’s an extremely engaging set of essays on Julian Huxley (I feel that Bashford was initially drawn to Julian’s life, as T.H.’s appearances have less depth and intrigue). These mix a form of ‘intimate’ family history writing that has been fairly popular over the past 20 years with histories of science, culture, and politics. It’s a pleasurable read because it allows those unfamiliar with the lives of the Huxleys to learn more about them with many thought-provoking suggestions grounded in Bashford’s expertise in the history of science.

[Benji · Rating 4 out of 5]

A lost world when poets were statesmen and scientists were wordsmiths. What happened in the minds of men, how words and images could reshape those minds for good and ill, was as much the business of liberal progressives as it was of communist re-education camps.

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Julian even pressed the need to build 'deep shelters' for the indefinite preservation and storage of this precious frozen sperm, shamelessly suggesting that 'shelters for sperm banks will give better genetic results than shelters for people, as well as being very much cheaper.'

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Beneath the cooled logical upper strate of my microcosm there is a fused mass of prophetism and mysticism, and the Lord knows what might happen to me, in case a moral earthquake cracked the superincumbent deposit, and permitted an eruption of the demonic element below.

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Fraud is often genius out of place.

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In relation to the human mind Nature is boundless; and though nowhere inaccessible, she is everywhere unfathomable.

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A row of black marks on a page can move a man to tears, though the bones of him that wrote it are long ago crumbled to dust.

[Matthias Walters · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me

[Redmar Huisman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Een goed boek over de Huxley familie en met name 2 prominente leden van de familie.

[Nina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Bashford masterfully illustrates the tumultuous history of Victorian and modern science through the lenses of two individuals whose reach seems to be all-encompassing, a fingerprint left on every topic (and certainly on many topics which have touched me personally growing up and as an adult).

The thematic divisions take some time to get used to, but once I understood the logic of it, I found myself being literally hungry to find time to pick up this book again. Bashford introduces Julian Huxley as a "spoiled baby person" according to May Sarton and promises the reader that she would be kinder to Julian's memory and she certainly succeeds in this goal. Knowing what other scholars have written about Julian Huxley, I'm not sure if the man deserves it, but I am glad that she did. The family history is handled with unprecedented tenderness, the figures and wording are as poetic as they are touching.

This book is nothing short of a masterpiece, and certainly my 2023 book of the year. I'd recommend it to anyone with even a passing interest in the history of scientific thought.

[Sue Pit · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a non-linear discussion of the Huxley family encompassing roughly 1825-1975. I initially thought, ala Huxley, "what on earth was the logic of this book's structure?". Alas, it is presented topically which may be the best way of discussing such a wide range of time/issues involving multiple certain Huxley persons. Who are the Huxleys? They were deeply involved and interested in biology, initially by chance arising from innate curiosity spurred on by an initial trip by the first focused upon Huxley, that being Thomas Henry Huxley. He championed Darwin's theories (who was older that Thomas Henry Huxley, but via mutual interests, with whom a friendship developed). Thomas Henry Huxley stood for scientific verification as a requirement re theories of evolution and other such. As with today, ideologies of various sorts oft played contrary to science. One of Thomas Henry Huxley's grand sons, Julian Huxley continued to carry the torch as to evolution but had a different approach of sorts and made significant findings and furtherance in biological topics. Interestingly, it is said therein that Thomas Henry Huxley initiated the use and application of the word 'agnostic' (1869) while the word 'biology' was still under "construction" during his lifetime. There are interesting overlaps/interactions with other persons likewise involved in biology, such as H.G. Well, Jane Goodall, Sir Francis Galton, David Attenborough and Joy Adamson, etc.. While the editing could be better, once one gets further along in the reading, it is becomes more compelling with interesting factoids and illustrates well the thinking over the decades on such matters (as well as other matters). It is worth a read. (NB: I use the term biology above to encompass anthropology, ethnology, zoology....)

[D.J. Cockburn · Rating 5 out of 5]

For the last quarter of a century, it seems like every topic I’ve looked into has had a Huxley lurking around somewhere. I picked up The Huxleys to try to understand how all their different interests fir together and it didn’t disappoint. It painted a vivid portrait of TH Huxley (comparative anatomist, self-appointed flag bearer for Darwin’s theory of natural selection and the first agnostic) and his grandson, Julian (ethologist, author, pioneering natural history broadcaster and flag bearer for – confusingly – both eugenics and racial equality), and the monumental influence that they both had on how science and society have unfolded over the last century and a half.

Bashford has divided their influence into topics, which needed some concentration at times but it would have been a lot harder if she’d used a chronological structure and I’d had to keep track of the many personal and intellectual aspects of their lives as they unfolded. As it is, it’s a richly told account of two very rich lives.

[Chris Allan · Rating 4 out of 5]

A well written and ridiculously well researched dual biography of T.H. Huxley ("Darwin's Bulldog") and his grandson Julian Huxley, with many supporting Huxley family members, including Julian's brother, Aldous, author of Brave New World. I thought I had understood the nineteenth and twentieth century debates over evolution and natural selection, but I had missed a lot of the subtleties and issues. For example, I had no idea that the spread of Mendelian genetics at the end of the nineteenth century made it look for a while like natural selection of genetic variations could not be the mechanism by which species evolved. Or that in the 1920s and 30s many people promoted eugenics to improve the human species, but still opposed fascist distortions of the concept.

I now know far more than I ever wanted about the Huxley family, though I'm glad I did. It's an easy to read and flowing book with a cast of colorful characters whose ideas are still relevant today.

[Elias Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a particular fondness and appreciation for the Huxley family, so I especially enjoyed learning about the vast complexities of Thomas Henry Huxley and Julian Huxley. At times, the book felt a bit disjointed, and I would have appreciated a stronger narrative thread to tie the material together. I also would have loved to hear more about Aldous (my personal favorite Huxley). Overall, it’s a long but engaging and enjoyable read.

[Vahid Askarpour · Rating 2 out of 5]

تاریخ مختصر گلوبالیسم علم-محور و عامل‌های اصلی پشت صحنهٔ سازمان ملل و شوراهای تخصصی‌ش! خاندان هاکسلی نمونهٔ روشن دگرگونی جهان‌گراها از سدهٔ نوزدهم تا امروز هست؛ به قلم نویسنده‌ای که عمیقاً براساس یک ایدئولوژی مشخص و با یک عینک خاص به کل ماجرا نگاه می‌کنه!

[Rob Sedgwick · Rating 5 out of 5]

A brilliant book chronicling the Huxley family, mainly Thomas Henry and Julian, but with many references to siblings, wives and younger generations. An amazing story of continuity across the generations, the genes really do live on!

[Ellen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting on T H Huxley and Julian Huxley. Not much about any other Huxleys…and there are a lot of them! Including female ones!

[Alejandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as engaging as I was hoping for, but pretty thorough and solid biography.

[Janine · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes you just have to shut a book when you reach the end and say "Wow!" That's what I did when I finished reading Alison Bashford's An Intimate History of Evolution, a dual biography of Thomas Henry (T. H.) Huxley and his grandson Julian Huxley that also drew in all the 'little' Huxleys as well. Not that there was anything 'little' about this family: it lay at the heart of 19th and 20th century British intellectual life, with links that extended to other illustrious families of science and letters like the Arnolds, Darwins, Galton and Wells.

Bashford's own grasp of T. H. and Julian Huxley's work is impressive. As a historian of science, she traces the contours of their scientific work, making it intelligible - and even, when you're reading about jellyfish, interesting. She is just as comfortable teasing out their philosophical and religious work, which does become rather esoteric at its edges. It is not a particularly easy read, but she is talking about big ideas - indeed, the biggest of ideas- and as a reader you have to work as well. She is writing about a family who were a tour de force in their intellectual milieu, and this book is Bashford's own tour de force of biography, science, philosophy and history as well. Brilliant

For my complete review, please visit: https://residentjudge.com/2024/01/28/...

[Timoer Frelink · Rating 5 out of 5]

A masterpiece