The title is taken from a phrase in John Milton's Samson Agonistes: The title of the book, like Milton's poem, recalls the biblical story of Samson; he was captured by the Philistines, his eyes were burned out and he was taken to Gaza, where he was forced to work at grinding grain in a mill.

Huxley's biographer, Sybille Bedford, whom Huxley knew (they were neighbours in the south of France), says in her fictional memoir Jigsaw that two of the novel's characters – Mary Amberley, a drug addict, and her daughter – were partly inspired by Bedford and her mother, who was addicted to morphine.

The novel focuses on four periods in the life of a socialite named Anthony Beavis between the 1890s (when he is a young boy) and 1936 – but not in chronological order.

According to Heffer, the book both harks back to Huxley's early satires and links to the more serious and philosophical concerns of his later novels.

[3] The blogger Josh Ronsen has created a table of the novel's events, rearranged in chronological order.