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Samuel Butler

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The man who rode Doctor the horse

Samuel "Erewhon" Butler

Samuel Butler (1835-1902), author was born on December 4, 1835, in Langar Rectory, near Bingham, Nottinghamshire, England. As a young man he moved to the then new colony of New Zealand, and wrote a description of his life there entitled A First Year in Canterbury Settlement. On his return to England from New Zealand, his satirical novel Erewhon was published anonymously, causing some speculation as to the identity of the author; when Butler was revealed as the author, there was some disappointment that it was not any of the more famous personages speculated about.

Erewhon

Erewhon is a novel by Samuel Butler published in 1871. It concerns a fictional country called Erewhon which the protagonist supposedly discovers while exploring the interior of the South Island of New Zealand. The name is an anagram for "nowhere." The novel, considered a classic of the dystopia genre, is a satirical look at various aspects of Victorian era society, including criminal punishment, religion and anthropocentrism.

Erewhon made Butler a well-known figure, and he wrote a number of other books, including a not so successful sequel, Erewhon Revisited. His semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh was not published until after his death, as he considered its tone of attack on Victorian hypocrisy would be too contentious.

Evolution Critic

Erewhon revealed Butler's long interest in Darwin's theories of biological evolution, though Butler spent a great deal of time criticising Darwin, not least because he believed that Charles had not sufficiently acknowledged his grandfather Erasmus Darwin's contibution to the origins of the theory.

Other Theories

He developed a theory that the Odyssey was written by a young Sicilian woman, and that the scenes of the poem were based on the coast of Sicily and its nearby islands. He described the evidence for this theory in his The Authoress of the Odyssey (1897) and in the introduction and footnotes to his translation of the Odyssey. Butler also translated the Iliad.

Samuel Butler died on June 18, 1902, in London, England.

The Authoress of the Odyssey is apparently out of print and not online; however, Butler's translations of the Odyssey and Iliad are available from Project Gutenberg.

  1. A biography by his friend Henry Festing Jones
  2. Project Gutenberg A first year..., Erewhon, Erewhon Revisited, The Way of All Flesh and several other of his works are available.