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Aldous Leonard Huxley was born on the
26th of July in 1894. He was fortunate enough to be born into an elite
English family. One of his grandfathers was the prominent biologist Thomas
Henry Huxley who was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and a contributor in the
development of the theory of evolution. His mother's sister was a published
author and one of his mother's uncles was a published poet. Over the course
of his own life, Huxley authored 47 books and many more short stories,
articles, dramatic scripts, poems and scholarly papers. He died on the
day of President John Fitzgerald Kenedy's assassination, the 22nd of November
in 1963.
First published in 1932, Brave New World was Huxley's fifth novel.
The story takes place in a utopian world of the distant future, in which
hunger, disease, and aging have been eliminated, and any emotional difficulty
can be immediately banished with a pill. Every occupant of this society has
been biologically and psychologically engineered to be perfectly adapted to
his/her intended role in society. Into this world steps Mr. John Savage with
a knowledge of good and evil that he has extracted from the works of William
Shakespeare. The story may be Huxley's retelling of the story of the Garden
of Eden which concludes not with Adam's expulsion from the garden but with
his desperate attempt to escape.
Brave New World
by Aldous Huxley |
Size: 213 KB |
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Before Huxley wrote his first utopian novel, Edward Bellamy had produced his
version of a future society in 1888, in which he foresaw not only a social
security system that guaranteed a pension and health care for every worker,
but internet shopping as well. Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward (from
2000 to 1887) is an IBC preview edition.
Looking Backward
by Edward Bellamy |
Size: 237 KB |
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And the book that gave it's name to the gendre of Utopian novels was
Sir Thomas More's Utopia.
Utopia
by Sir Thomas More |
Size: 124 KB |
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The residents of Huxley's Brave New World enjoyed freedom from hunger, disease,
financial insecurity, emotional distress and even, to some extent, aging. Yet
Huxley's novel is a disapproving criticism of the utopia that he described.
Why? Well, Huxley was born into the English leisure class of the time before
the great wars. Britain was then, still, a very class-conscious society that
worked very well to the benefit of Aldous Huxley, his family and his friends.
Huxley and the other members of his class didn't suffer from hunger or
financial insecurity, and when they were sick, they were able to take advantage
of the best medical care available to anyone. The residents of Brave New
World spent the first third of their lives being educated for their roles in
the social order; the second third was spent in performing their planned roles
and self-actualization was postponed until the last third of life. But for
Huxley and his friends, even education was an experiment in self-actualization.
In short, Brave New World offered nothing to the English leisure class that
they did not already enjoy, yet it threatened them with the loss of their
lifelong pursuit of self-actualization.
Crome Yellow is Huxley's first novel. It is a tale of a
summer holiday, shared among friends at an English country estate (Crome).
In this volume, ALH presents his early explorations of ideas that will
re-appear in his later works, including a justification of aristocracy and
the first outlines of the structure of the society of Brave New World. Many
of these thoughts are presented in conversations between the central character
(Denis Stone, a young poet, who bears considerable resemblance to the young
Aldous Huxley) and his host (Henry Wimbush) or Mr. Scogan, a close friend of
the host.
The book is interesting not only as an early presentation of Huxley's ideas,
but also as a story about young romance and adolescent insecurity among the
English gentry in the first years after the First World War, and presents
a view from the leisure class of the social upheaval that occurred in those
years.
Crome Yellow
by Aldous Huxley |
Size: 187 KB |
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