After Many a Summer Dies the Swan

novel by Huxley

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Article History

After Many a Summer Dies the Swan, a comedic novel written by Aldous Huxley. Published in 1939 under the title After Many a Summer, the novel was republished under its current title later in the same year.

Written soon after Huxley left England and settled in California, the novel is Huxley’s examination of American culture, particularly what he saw as its narcissism, superficiality, and obsession with youth. The title is a line from Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s poem “Tithonus,” about the figure from Greek mythology to whom Zeus gave eternal life but not eternal youth. Tithonus’s mind and body waste away, but he cannot die. In Huxley’s novel, California millionaire Jo Stoyte learns of an English nobleman who discovered a way to vastly extend the human life span. Stoyte travels to England and finds the nobleman still alive but devolved into an apelike creature. Stoyte decides to extend his own life regardless of the consequences.

This article was most recently revised and updated by Kathleen Kuiper.