Crome Yellow
| Crome Yellow | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Author | Aldous Huxley |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Novel |
| Publisher | Chatto & Windus |
Publication date | 1921 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| Pages | 307 pp |
| ISBN | 9781613109847 |
Crome Yellow is the first novel by British author Aldous Huxley, published in 1921. In the book, Huxley satirises the fads and fashions of the time. It is the story of a house party at Crome, a parodic version of Garsington Manor, home of Lady Ottoline Morrell, a house where authors such as Huxley and T. S. Eliot used to gather and write.
The book contains a brief pre-figuring of Huxley's later novel, Brave New World. Mr. Scogan, one of the characters, describes an "impersonal generation" of the future that will "take the place of Nature's hideous system. In vast state incubators, rows upon rows of gravid bottles will supply the world with the population it requires. The family system will disappear; society, sapped at its very base, will have to find new foundations; and Eros, beautifully and irresponsibly free, will flit like a gay butterfly from flower to flower through a sunlit world."
Plot
Crome Yellow is in the tradition of the English country house novel, as practised by Thomas Love Peacock, in which a diverse group of characters descend upon an estate to leech off the host. They spend most of their time eating, drinking, and holding forth on their personal intellectual conceits. There is little plot development.
The book describes in satirical fashion a number of 'types' of the period. The house party is viewed largely through the eyes of the naive young poet Denis Stone, who fails to establish the friendship he seeks with the flirtatious Ann Wimbush, is caricatured by the reclusive Jenny, and is bossed about by the austere Mary. Mr. Wimbush, the owner of Crome, has been writing a history of the house and its family, of which extracts are given. His wife is obsessed with spiritualism. Other characters include the pompous literary hack Mr.Barbecue-Smith, the cynical Mr. Scogan (who has elements of Bertrand Russell and of Norman Douglas), the libertine Ivor Lombard, the artist Gombauld, and the ascetic and melancholy Vicar and his wife.[1]
References
- ↑ "Crome Yellow". The Literature Review. Retrieved 6 December 2013.
External links
References
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