Biography Essay

Although Samuel Butler was largely overlooked by the general public in his own time— only one of his books, Erewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later (1901), was published without financial support from its author—Samuel Butler achieved fame soon after his death in 1902 and has ever since been recognized as a significant Victorian writer. The powerful and original critique of the family in the posthumously published The Way of All Flesh (1903) was acclaimed in 1906 by an enthusiastic George Bernard Shaw, whose comments together with those of others brought it wide attention. The insights into family life presented in this novel have aroused a strong response in many generations of readers, and countless writers have since carried them on. Butler's manyfaceted appraisal of the whole human condition in his satire Erewhon (1872), in his books on evolution, and in his Note-Books (1912) still evokes a kind of shock of...