Sexual rejuvenation and hegemonic masculinity in C.P. Snow’s suppressed novel New Lives for Old (1933)

The English physical chemist C.P. Snow is most renowned for his 1959 Rede Lecture The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution in which he lamented the intellectual divide between the sciences and the humanities. His work as a prolific writer of fiction, however, is less well-known, though he wrote seventeen novels over the course of his lifetime. New Lives for Old, published anonymously in 1933 and subsequently suppressed by the author, is the most obscure of these works. The novel’s fictional protagonist Billy Pilgrim, a professor of biophysics at Kings College, London, develops a technique for synthesising a human sex hormone which can prevent the atrophy of the ageing body. The first part of this paper draws on new archival documents to sketch the background to the novel’s publication and suppression. The second part situates the novel in relation to the under-explored subgenre of rejuvenation fiction from the early decades of the twentieth century, emphasising the dynamic exchange of rejuvenation discourses during this period across the medical and cultural spheres. The third and final part draws on the sociological concept of hegemonic masculinity to illuminate the book’s androcentrism and its sexism, tracing the ways in which C.P. Snow mobilises the gendered concept and practice of medical rejuvenation to navigate perceived threats to male privilege and authority.