Antic Hay

In London just after the First World War, Theodore Gumbril, a bored young schoolmaster, gives up teaching to sell his invention, trousers with an inflatable seat, and, disguised with a false beard as a 'Complete Man', throws himself into the restless, cynical world of the city's artists and intellectuals: a failed painter of huge historical canvases, a scientist who neglects his wife for his experiments, and the fascinating, unhappy Myra Viveash, who drifts through every party in search of a feeling she has lost.

Aldous Huxley published the satire in 1923, and it was condemned by some as immoral and admired by others as the truest picture of the 'lost generation' in London. Read his Crome Yellow, and compare Fitzgerald's This Side of Paradise.