Overview: Editorial Review

Mortal Coils is a collection of five short stories, including perhaps his best known, The Gioconda Smile, representing Huxley's early work, written in 1922. ("Mortal Coils" is an old phrase, found in Shakespeare, referring to the body and its entaglements, which is cast off at death.) Huxley later went on to be a Hollywood screenwriter; Permutations Among the Nightingales is one of his earliest works in the form of a script for a play. Also included: Permutations Among the Nightingales, The Tillotson Banquet t, Green Tunnels, and Nuns at Luncheon ).