Brave New World
- ISBN-10
- 150091309X
- ISBN-13
- 9781500913090
- Series
- Brave New World
- Category
- Collectivism
- Pages
- 114
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2014-08-22
- Authors
- Aldous Huxley, Acino Acinonyx
Description
Aldous Leonard Huxley, the third son of writer and schoolmaster Leonard Huxley and Julia Arnold, was born in Godalming Surrey on 26 July 1894. His mother was the niece of Mathew Arnold and his grandfather was the famous biologist Thomas Henry Huxley. Aldous Huxley was a prominent member of the Huxley family and he is best known for his novels including Brave New World, which is set in a dystopian London, The Doors of Perception, which recalls experiences when taking a psychedelic drug, and a wide-ranging output of essays. Besides writing as an author, he edited the magazine Oxford Poetry and published short stories, poetry, travel writing, film stories and scripts. He spent the later part of his life in the United States where he lived in Los Angeles from 1937 until his death in 1963.Huxley was a humanist, pacifist, and satirist. He became deeply concerned that human beings might become subjugated through the sophisticated use of the mass media or mood-altering drugs, or tragically impacted by misunderstanding or the misapplication of increasingly sophisticated technology. Huxley later became interested in spiritual subjects such as parapsychology and philosophical mysticism, in particular, Universalism He is also well known for his use of psychedelic drugs. By the end of his life Huxley was widely acknowledged as one of the pre-eminent intellectuals of his time. Aldous Huxley wrote Brave New World in 1931 and published it in a book form in 1932. The story is in London at the time of AD 2540 and this period is described as a new era of 632 A. F.-"After Ford". The novel anticipates the developments in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation, and classical conditioning that combine profoundly to change the society. Huxley answered this book with a reassessment in an essay, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with Island (1962), his final novel.In 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World fifth on its list of the 100 best english-language novels of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum writing for The Observer listed Brave New World number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time" and the novel was listed at number 87 on the BBC's survey The Big Read. Brave New World title of this book comes from Miranda's speech in William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I: O wonder!How many goodly creatures are there here!How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,That has such people in't.Miranda was raised for most of her life on an isolated island, and the only people she ever knew were only her father and his servants, an enslaved savage, and spirits, Ariel. When she saw other people for the first time, she was overcome with excitement, and uttered, among other praise, the famous lines above. However, what she actually observed were not the men acting in a refined or civilized manner, but rather representatives of the worst of humanity, who betrayed or tried to betray their brothers or leaders to get ahead. Huxley employs the same idea when the "savage" John refers to a "brave new world".
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