[HUXLEY, ALDOUS]. Brave New World. London: Chatto & Windus, 1932.
FIRST U.K. EDITION, FIRST PRINTING. Cloth-bound; hardcover; octavo (19.5 x 12.5 x 3.5 cm); pp. [6], 306, [1]. English text. Bound in publisher's blue covers the spine lettered in gilt; top edge tinted blue. Printed in Great Britain by T. and A. Constable. Condition: GOOD. Binding secure with a slight lean. The spine cloth slightly darkened, the ends a little rubbed. Interior well-preserved, some light foxing mostly confined to the prelims. Contemporary bookplate to front endpaper recto.
Notes: The first British trade edition of this classic dystopian novel - Huxley's most popular. It presents a nearly omnipotent totalitarian state essentially built from the ground up, rather than the top-down dictatorship of 1984. A nightmarish prognostication of a future in which humanity has been destroyed by science. 'After the success of his first three novels, Huxley abandoned the fictional milieu of literary London and directed his satire toward an imagined future. He admitted that the original idea of Brave New World was to challenge H.G. Wells' Utopian vision. The novel also marks Huxley's increasing disenchantment with the world, which was to result in his leaving England for California in 1937 in search of a more spiritual life. The book was immediately successful' (Parker & Kermode, 161-62). Named by Modern Library as one of the 100 Greatest Novels of the twentieth century.
