Brave New World

Title: Brave New World

Significance of Title: In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, in act 5 scene 1, on line 204, Mira states: “How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world, That has such people in’t!” To say the least, this book has quite a few references to Shakespeare. This segment in particular is used, because the setting of the book is of a ‘brave new world’ where almost everything is different from our current situation, and outwardly, every member of the society seems content in their position. It is likely that Huxley thought this was slightly ironic, as what appears to be a perfect government is in reality ultimately oppressive of the most basic personal freedoms, infringing even upon the opinions of its constituents.

Author: Aldous Huxley

Significant facts about the author:

Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey, England on July 26, 1894 to a family deeply rooted in England's literary and scientific tradition. Huxley's father, Leonard Huxley, was the son of Thomas Henry Huxley, a well-known biologist who gained the nickname "Darwin's bulldog" for supporting Charles Darwin's evolutionary ideas. His mother, Julia Arnold, was related to the important nineteenth-century poet and essayist Matthew Arnold.

Brought up by a family of teachers and scientists, Huxley had an exceptional education. His intelligence was very well balanced between English writing and science, making him a very good science fiction writer. Huxley was very eager to believe new theories and ideas in the science world, and quickly incorporated them into his novels, which, although unscientific, produced extremely entertaining results.

Huxley’s writing has also been affected by a partial blindness that he contracted at an early age. First of all, it forced him out of his preferred career as a doctor, and it also show up in quite a few of his novels as a theme.

After graduating from Oxford in 1916, Huxley began to make a name for himself writing satirical pieces about the British upper class. Though these writings were skillful and gained Huxley an audience and literary name, they were generally considered to be somewhat vapid and meaningless. Huxley continued to write prolifically, working as an essayist and journalist, and publishing four volumes of poetry before beginning to work on novels. Without giving up his other writing, beginning in 1921, Huxley produced a series of novels at an astonishing rate: Crome Yellow was published in 1921, followed by Antic Hay in 1923, Those Barren Leaves in 1925, and Point Counter Point in 1928.