An early novel by Rose Macaulay about a government program of
compulsory selective breeding in a dystopian future England.
In a near-future England, a new government entity--the Ministry of
Brains--attempts to stave off idiocracy through a program of compulsory
selective breeding. Kitty Grammont, who shares author Rose Macaulay's
own ambivalent attitude, gets involved in the Ministry's propaganda
efforts, which the novel details with an entertaining thoroughness. (The
alphabetical caste system dreamed up by Macaulay for her nightmare world
would directly influence Aldous Huxley's 1932 dystopia Brave New
World.) But when Kitty falls in love with the Minister for Brains, a
man whose genetic shortcomings make a union with her impossible, their
illicit affair threatens to topple the government. Because it ridiculed
wartime bureaucracy, the planned 1918 publication of What Not was
delayed until after the end of World War I.