Samuel Butler is not exactly well known today in English literature, though he may be better known and more widely read now than in his own time, the latter days of the Victorian period. He was generally considered a crackpot philosopher rather than a travel writer or novelist, and his books typically focused on his theories on matters involving religion (he doubted many orthodox beliefs), evolution (though a believer in evolution, he spent much of his time arguing with Charles Darwin), and psychology (he pioneered a neo-Lamarckian theory of heredity through unconscious memory). He found few takers for his opinions and published most of his books at his own expense. If his contemporaries knew any of his works at all, those works were Erewhon; or, Over the Range (1872), Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later (1901), and The Way of All Flesh (1903). They are still his most frequently read works, continuously...