Who wrote Brave New World?
Quick answer
Brave New World is a dystopian novel written by English author Aldous Huxley and published in 1932. It imagines a future World State where people are engineered in laboratories, conditioned from birth to accept their social class, and kept content with pleasure and a drug called soma.
Key facts
- Author
- Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)
- Published
- 1932
- Setting
- London, AD 2540 (“632 After Ford”)
- Title source
- A line in Shakespeare’s The Tempest
Life in the World State
| Feature | How it works |
|---|---|
| Engineered birth | Babies are grown in hatcheries; families and parenthood don’t exist |
| Castes | People are designed as Alphas, Betas, Gammas, Deltas or Epsilons |
| Conditioning | Children are trained by repetition and sleep-teaching to love their role |
| Soma | A drug that removes any unhappiness |
| “Ford” | Henry Ford, inventor of the assembly line, is worshipped like a god |
The story in brief
Bernard Marx, an Alpha who feels like an outsider, visits a “Savage Reservation” and brings back John, a young man raised outside the World State who learned about life from an old copy of Shakespeare. John is horrified by a society without art, love, struggle or freedom, and the clash leads to tragedy.
Where the title comes from
In Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Miranda, seeing new people for the first time, exclaims, “O brave new world, that has such people in’t!” Huxley uses the line ironically.
Brave New World vs 1984
| Brave New World (1932) | 1984 (1949) | |
|---|---|---|
| Author | Aldous Huxley | George Orwell |
| Control through | Pleasure, comfort and distraction | Fear, surveillance and punishment |
| Famous ideas | Soma, conditioning | Big Brother, the Thought Police |
Critics often say modern life contains elements of both visions.
Legacy
The novel is frequently taught and frequently challenged in schools. It raises questions about genetic engineering, consumerism and technology that still feel current, and has been adapted for TV several times.
For more classic novels, see who wrote The Great Gatsby and which Shakespeare play features Rosencrantz and Guildenstern.
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