Author

• Aldous Huxley was born in Surrey (England) on 26^th July in 1894
• his parents both came from families with long literary and scientific traditions - his father was a writer and teacher and his mother was a schoolmistress
• Huxley attended Eton and was a passionate student - he was also universally interested which resulted in him having a great knowledge of the English language but also in being informed about recent developments in technology and science
• his versatile knowledge was significant with regard to the integration of science into his fictive novels
• shortly after graduating from Oxford in 1916, Huxley started writing satirical pieces about upper-class Britain; however, they only remained a shallow portrayal
• Huxley worked as an essayist and journalist, wrote four volumes of poetry and began to write more profound and philosophical novels in 1921
• his works usually deal with the conflict between the interests of the individual and the society
• Brave New World is considered his most significant work regarding the sacrifice of freedom and individuality for social stability
• also, it combines his knowledge of science and his literary skills in order to create a dystopian environment
• Huxley believed that the reduction and obliteration of human individuality and creativity is inevitable when science, technology and politics are intertwined
• over the years, Huxley became a pacifist and in 1937, Huxley moved to California and observed the growing military buildup in Europe from afar
• in his fifties, Huxley experimented with hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD and mescaline and wrote several novels afterwards that dealt with the experiences; these highly influenced the culture of the 60s
• Brave New World has received mixed receptions - back then, it was banned oftentimes from schools and libraries and today it still remains on some lists of censored books
• however, the novel raises the important question of what society is missing in a perfect world void of poverty, sickness and sadness - the reason why it still resonates

Political Background

• Brave New World was published between World War I and World War II - the height of an era of technological optimism in the West
• Aldous Huxley was highly sceptical of that optimism and foresaw the developments of totalitarian governments and newly engineered weapons technology that led to World War II and the Cold War
• Huxley also believed that relying on the newly developed technologies was rather naive and he decided to challenge these ideas by imagining them taken to their extremes
• one year after Brave New World was published, Hitler came to power in Germany
• six years later, World War II broke out and 13 years later, the atomic bomb was dropped that started the Cold War