“YES, EVERYBODY’S HAPPY NOW”: FIRST EDITION OF BRAVE NEW WORLD

HUXLEY, Aldous. Brave New World. London: Chatto & Windus, 1932. Octavo, original blue cloth, original dust jacket. Housed in a custom clamshell box.

First trade edition of Huxley’s haunting dystopian classic, this copy inscribed with the date of “February 27, 1932” in the year of publication by William Theodore Golden, likely belonging to the prominent American statesman and entrepreneur who forged a path for science in America, initiating the creation of a national science adviser under Truman, and pivotal in the creation of the National Science Foundation—“an icon in the American scientific community” (Washington Post).

“A nightmarish prognostication of a future in which humanity has been destroyed by science… easily Huxley’s most popular (and many good judges continue to think his best) novel” (DNB). “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). It remains the “seminal dystopia… As argument and as satire, Brave New World is a compendium of usable points and quotable jibes… and has provided material for much subsequent fiction,” not only within speculative fiction but also beyond it (Clute & Nicholls, 606). “Along with Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is one of only two futuristic novels to have made a considerable contribution to the social and political rhetoric of the 20th century” (Anatomy of Wonder II-558). Preceded by the signed limited edition of 324 copies. Connolly 75. Books of the Century, 94-96. An English Library, 30. Owner inscription of William Theodore Golden dated “February 27, 1932,” likely belonging to the prominent American statesman and entrepeneur “who earned a fortune in the 1930s through canny Wall Street investments, spent more than 50 years bringing the foremost minds of science together with presidents, mayors and international leaders. After working as an official at the Atomic Energy Commission in the late 1940s, Golden became a consultant to President Truman in 1950 and recommended that he hire a scientist to monitor the nation’s research efforts. Every president since has had an official science adviser. Golden also helped launch the National Science Foundation… [and was a] financial supporter of nearly 100 medical schools, museums, universities and other institutions, including the National Academy of Sciences, the Carnegie Institution for Science and the American Association for the Advancement of Science… and discussed science policy with such world figures as Albert Einstein, Al Gore and the Dalai Lama.” At his death in 2007, Golden was remembered as “an icon in the American scientific community” (Washington Post).

Text fine, lightest edge-wear to bright gilt cloth; chipping to spine head of dust jacket minimally affecting spine title. A highly desirable near-fine copy.