Crome Yellow

Denis Stone, a shy young poet, spends a summer at Crome, an English country house full of eccentric guests: the host, who is writing a history of the house; his wife, who studies horoscopes and the stock market; a painter, a mystic, a cynic who predicts a future in which babies will be bred in bottles, and Anne, the cool, amused young woman Denis loves but cannot bring himself to tell. Little happens except talk, endless, brilliant and absurd.

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) published his first novel in 1921, at twenty-seven, satirising guests he had met at Garsington Manor, the home of Lady Ottoline Morrell. Its talk of babies bred in bottles already looks forward to Brave New World. Read also his Antic Hay.