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Brave New World
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Brave New World
Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931, and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often used as a companion piece, or inversion counterpart to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
In 1998 and 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World at number 5 on its list of the 100 Best Novels in English of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for The Observer, included Brave New World chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on The Big Read survey by the BBC. Brave New World has frequently been banned and challenged since its original publication. It has landed on the American Library Association list of top 100 banned and challenged books of the decade since the association began the list in 1990.
The title Brave New World derives from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, Miranda's speech:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in 't.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206
Shakespeare's use of the phrase is intended ironically, as the speaker is failing to recognise the evil nature of the island's visitors because of her innocence. Indeed, the next speaker—Miranda's father Prospero—replies to her innocent observation with the statement "'Tis new to thee".
Translations of the title often allude to similar expressions used in domestic works of literature: the French edition of the work is entitled Le Meilleur des mondes (The Best of All Worlds), an allusion to an expression used by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and satirised in Candide, Ou l'Optimisme by Voltaire (1759). The first Standard Chinese translation, done by novelist Lily Hsueh and Aaron Jen-wang Hsueh in 1974, is entitled "美麗新世界" (Pinyin: Měilì Xīn Shìjiè, literally "Beautiful New World"), quoting the Chinese translation of Tempest.
Huxley wrote Brave New World while living in Sanary-sur-Mer, France, in the four months from May to August 1931. By this time, Huxley had established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines and had published a collection of his poetry (The Burning Wheel, 1916) and four satirical novels, Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928). Brave New World was Huxley's fifth novel and first dystopian work.
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Brave New World
Brave New World is a dystopian novel by English author Aldous Huxley, written in 1931, and published in 1932. Largely set in a futuristic World State, whose citizens are environmentally engineered into an intelligence-based social hierarchy, the novel anticipates huge scientific advancements in reproductive technology, sleep-learning, psychological manipulation and classical conditioning that are combined to make a dystopian society which is challenged by the story's protagonist. Huxley followed this book with a reassessment in essay form, Brave New World Revisited (1958), and with his final novel, Island (1962), the utopian counterpart. This novel is often used as a companion piece, or inversion counterpart to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949).
In 1998 and 1999, the Modern Library ranked Brave New World at number 5 on its list of the 100 Best Novels in English of the 20th century. In 2003, Robert McCrum, writing for The Observer, included Brave New World chronologically at number 53 in "the top 100 greatest novels of all time", and the novel was listed at number 87 on The Big Read survey by the BBC. Brave New World has frequently been banned and challenged since its original publication. It has landed on the American Library Association list of top 100 banned and challenged books of the decade since the association began the list in 1990.
The title Brave New World derives from William Shakespeare's The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, Miranda's speech:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world,
That has such people in 't.
— William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act V, Scene I, ll. 203–206
Shakespeare's use of the phrase is intended ironically, as the speaker is failing to recognise the evil nature of the island's visitors because of her innocence. Indeed, the next speaker—Miranda's father Prospero—replies to her innocent observation with the statement "'Tis new to thee".
Translations of the title often allude to similar expressions used in domestic works of literature: the French edition of the work is entitled Le Meilleur des mondes (The Best of All Worlds), an allusion to an expression used by the philosopher Gottfried Leibniz and satirised in Candide, Ou l'Optimisme by Voltaire (1759). The first Standard Chinese translation, done by novelist Lily Hsueh and Aaron Jen-wang Hsueh in 1974, is entitled "美麗新世界" (Pinyin: Měilì Xīn Shìjiè, literally "Beautiful New World"), quoting the Chinese translation of Tempest.
Huxley wrote Brave New World while living in Sanary-sur-Mer, France, in the four months from May to August 1931. By this time, Huxley had established himself as a writer and social satirist. He was a contributor to Vanity Fair and Vogue magazines and had published a collection of his poetry (The Burning Wheel, 1916) and four satirical novels, Crome Yellow (1921), Antic Hay (1923), Those Barren Leaves (1925) and Point Counter Point (1928). Brave New World was Huxley's fifth novel and first dystopian work.