Showing papers on "Dystopia published in 1979"

A Neglected Huxley "Preface": His Earliest Synopsis of Brave New World

Abstract: Few students of utopianism recognize the name J. H. Burns. He authored A Vision of Education, Being an Imaginary Verbatim Report of the First Interplanetary Conference.' Published in London by Williams and Norgate four years before one of the century's most famous dystopias, this imaginary convocation deserves remembering for the "Preface" Aldous Huxley contributed. Ignoring Burns and his book, Huxley took the occasion to describe an impending future bleaker than anything the Interplanetary Conference anticipates. The description is worth reprinting in future editions of Huxley's collected prose. It amounts to a synopsis of the themes of breeding and education in Brave New World. In an unlikely place, one finds clues to the genesis of Huxley's most popular novel.2 The clues alter current conceptions about the novel's origin and composition. According to Grover Smith's generally useful "Chronology," Huxley wrote Brave New World between May and August of 1931.3 Mrs. Bedford states that Huxley's "bad utopia" was not begun until April of that year. "In the three years after Point Counter Point," Mrs. Bedford recalls, "Aldous did not attempt any major work."4 Admittedly, the "Preface" does not offer definite proof to the contrary. But the advanced state of development Huxley's ideas on breeding and education had attained by the 1929 introduction to Burns's volume suggests that the actual writing may have begun much earlier. Planning for the novel certainly did.