Mortal Coils

Mortal Coils is a collection of five short fictional plays written by Aldous Huxley and first published in 1921.

These stories allow us to appreciate the wit, intellect and satirical ability with which Huxley delights us, offering a variety of very different types of narrative in which we can explore different themes of the human condition from a witty perspective very characteristic of Huxley.

"Miss Spence will be down directly, sir."
"Thank you," said Mr. Hutton, without turning round. Janet Spence's parlourmaid was so ugly—ugly on purpose, it always seemed to him, malignantly, criminally ugly—that he could not bear to look at her more than was necessary. The door closed. Left to himself, Mr. Hutton got up and began to wander round the room, looking with meditative eyes at the familiar objects it contained."