In 2012, the Folio Society in collaboration with the House of Illustration announced their annual competition to illustrate a book. The book to be illustrated and published for 2013 was the novel ‘Brave New World’ by Aldous Huxley. The novel is set in an idealistic future where human reproduction is strictly carried out in vitro, the ideas of pregnancy, religion, family and emotional attachments to others are taboo and society has a strict social order according to supreme genetics. Everyone is manufactured to be a specific someone and everyone is conditioned to be happy in their roles. Outside this Utopia, there are still people living naturally who are referred to as ‘savages’. The story examines the effects of when these two worlds collide by following Bernard Marx and Lenina who meet with ‘John the Savage’ when on a trip to a savage tourist resort and persuade him to come back with them.
The following illustrations are my entries to the competition and some of the preliminary and development work I carried out.
