Brave New World.

HUXLEY, Aldous.

Item Number: 81180

London: Chatto & Windus, 1932.

First edition of Huxley’s masterpiece. Octavo, original blue cloth. Signed by the author on the half-title page, “with good wishes Aldous Huxley.” From the library of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Murray Gell-Mann with his bookplate, near fine in a very good dust jacket with light wear to the extremities. Gell-Mann received the 1969 Nobel Prize in physics for his work on the theory of elementary particles and later co-founded the Santa Fe Institute in 1984, dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of complex adaptive systems. An admirer of  Huxley, Gell-Mann’s work was influenced by his thoughts on science and spirituality. Like Huxley, he championed agnosticism and humanism, emphasizing the importance of critical thinking over acceptance of dogma throughout his work and in his teaching. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell box. Signed trade editions of Brave New World are exceptionally rare and with noted provenance.

"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). Named by Modern Library as one of the 100 Greatest Novels of the twentieth century.