BRAVE NEW WORLD is one of the most important novels of the 20th century.

Finally, a Fine Letterpress edition of Brave New World! Coming soon from ARETE EDITIONS.

‘Man is now the victim of his own technology’ – Aldous Huxley.

‘It’s possible to argue that Huxley got more right than his fellow dystopian, George Orwell. That was definitely the opinion of the great SF writer JG Ballard. Ballard said: “Huxley’s greatest novel, Brave New World , is a far shrewder guess at the likely shape of a future tyranny than Orwell’s vision of Stalinist terror in Nineteen Eighty-Four.”

The crucial point for Ballard was that Huxley described a world in which humanity welcomed its enslavement. In Nineteen-Eighty-Four, Big Brother is an oppressor, stamping a boot forever on a human face. In Brave New World, thanks to mood-altering drugs, the distractions of mass media technology, and ready access to sexual gratification, most people don’t even realise that they have no freedom. In this society, discontent is quelled by advertising, medication, sex and entertainment. Which really does sound quite familiar. So familiar (Huxley also describes such modern-seeming phenomena as test-tube babies and Virtual Reality cinema) that it’s hard to believe Brave New World was written in the early 1930s’ (BBC Dangerous visions).

Brave New World is an astonishingly prescient novel, foretelling advances in each of these areas that were as much as a half-century away.

Set in London in 2540, the 7th century After Ford, Brave New World presents a future in which genetically engineered babies are produced on assembly lines, the social and economic divide between the haves and the have nots is legally enforced and discontent is quelled by advertising, medication, sex and entertainment.

The novel proved to be a massive critical and commercial success, cementing Huxley’s place as one of the most important writers of the era. And it is also acknowledged to be one of the most important novels of the last 100 years.

We have, for the last two and a half years, been working with one of the pioneers of the ‘Pop Art’ movement of the ‘60’s; Allen Jones. Known for his brightly coloured paintings, prints and, sometimes infamous, sculptures, he is one of the last living artists from that time. Allen has produced over 20 colour prints and many black and white images for Arete’s Brave New World. Concentrating on the human relationships and the characters in his own unique voice, Allen Jones has managed to find a vision of the book not explored before.

We feel he has created an extraordinary book. Rich Tong, a long admirer of Allen’s paintings since his art school days, has been thrilled to work with the artist for the last year creating a book which is also a piece of art!

Something Rich and I did earlier in the year!

https://www.facebook.com/lyrasbooks/posts/pfbid037iDyppoSLqEzMgav4HKLnVRYkCgUfRkb8UYUth6khzkKoBsnwGCo6GnE72eANKyHl

News from Rich!!!

https://www.facebook.com/lyrasbooks/posts/pfbid02MK3qrgWdYj19432mDVkMMmU4B7B2YjYRWRn3oXakFx7GKFcFWH4uHUgMpXAyafXvl

We have a number of books in the pipeline and one we hope to announce imminently, and we have Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World coming very soon, the first time for fifty years that a Fine letterpress version has been created.

‘Ensconced in his recently purchased villa in the South of France, in late 1931 Huxley began work on what is now widely considered to be one of the Western canon’s most important novels. Published in 1932, Brave New World marks the apogee of Huxley’s abilities as a satirist. The world it presents, however, is viewed through a much darker lens, informed by the writer’s growing anxieties about the direction of political, social and scientific progress. Brave New World is also an astonishingly prescient novel, foretelling advances in each of these areas that were as much as a half-century away.

Set in London in 2540, the 7th century After Ford, Brave New World presents a future in which genetically engineered babies are produced on assembly lines, the social and economic divide between the haves and the have nots is legally enforced and discontent is quelled by advertising, medication, sex and entertainment.’

From Aldous Huxley Biography.com.

We have, for the last two years, been working with one of the pioneers of the ‘Pop Art’ movement of the ‘60’s; Allen Jones. Known for his brightly coloured paintings, prints and, sometimes infamous, sculptures, he is one of the last living artists from that time. He has produced over 20 colour prints and many black and white images for the story. Concentrating on the human relationships and the characters in his own unique voice, Allen Jones has managed to find a vision of the book not explored before. We feel he has created an extraordinary book.

FROZEN HELL! Final call out for change of address. Please notify us if you have changed your address since you ordered Frozen Hell numbered editions, many thanks for your patience and support! It is on it’s way!!

We’ve all been working hard behind the scenes and we’ll have some terrific news coming very soon! However, for now…

Frozen Hell IMPORTANT.

Finally! The numbered edition of Frozen Hell is about to be shipped! If any of you that have ordered a book, I know it was a while ago now, and have moved or changed address PLEASE NOTIFY US!!

Ludlow’s are hoping to start sending the books out early next week. Phil is away on holiday next week too, so if you have a change of address, please let us know sooner than later.

The Lettered/Roman edition will be a little while longer as it is much more complicated and we wanted to get the Numbered out of the way first. The book blocks (the really complicated bit) are finished. The leather is all prepped for the boxes and books will be ready to go. Soon!

Frozen Hell update! We’ve been busy over the last few weeks, production on Frozen Hell and Lyra’s Oz, printing Benjamin Button and working out our future books. Frozen Hell has a very complex interior production which has taken an awful lot longer for the craftspeople at Ludlow Bookbinders, these clips, unedited, will give you a sense of putting in twenty two foldouts, double page and single page plates that need to be sewn into the book! It is proving VERY time consuming.

And here’s another teaser! For Lud-in-the Mist by Hope Mirrlees, one of the most influential fantasy novels in the last few decades, originally only known by authors such as Neil Gaiman, now acknowledged as a towering masterpiece. This is the first Fine Press edition of the book, extraordinarily illustrated by Scott McKowen using scratchboard technique, which is perfect for letterpress print making:

A teaser, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley has not had a Fine Press edition for over fifty years that I know of.

We have, for the last two years, been working with one of the pioneers of the ‘Pop Art’ movement of the ‘60’s; Allen Jones. Known for his brightly coloured paintings, prints and, sometimes infamous, sculptures, he is one of the last living artists from that time. He has produced over 20 prints for the story. Concentrating on the human relationships and the characters in his own unique voice, Allen Jones has managed to find vision of the book not explored before. We feel he has created an extraordinary book.

Here is a letterpress print of the scene that shocks the audience watching, then: ‘Laughter broke out, enormous, almost hysterical, peal after peal, as though it would never stop. My father–and it was the Director! My father! Oh Ford, oh Ford! That was really too good. The whooping and the roaring renewed themselves, faces seemed on the point of disintegration, tears were streaming. Six more test-tubes of spermatozoa were upset. My father!’

While I work on getting Oz together for Rich’s Lyra, we are working on other books!

One of them is Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, Neil Gaiman says; Lud as “one of the finest [fantasy novels] in the English language…. It is a little golden miracle of a book.” He described Mirrlees’s writing as “elegant, supple, effective and haunting: the author demands a great deal from her readers, which she repays many times over.” He says that it is one of his top ten favourite books.

Scott McKowen is the illustrator for the novel, he is creating over thirty, letterpress relief print illustrations for the book! Here he shows us his tools and work in progress of the finished piece: ‘My tools are all here — no.11 x-acto blade, an engraving burin when I need an even finer line, an old Castel-Faber technical pen with black ink (for correcting errors), magnifying lupe attached to the swing-arm of an old desk lamp (held on with jury-rigged plastic plumbing hardware), and a brush for sweeping away the insidious ink dust….’