Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) was an English author and iconoclast whose works challenged Victorian orthodoxy. Born to a clergyman, he rejected a career in the church and instead managed a sheep farm in New Zealand, an experience that informed his satirical novel Erewhon (1872), a fictional land that parodies contemporary society, religion, and evolution. He later wrote a sequel, Erewhon Revisited (1901). His masterpiece, The Way of All Flesh (published posthumously in 1903), is a biting autobiographical novel critiquing family, religion, and education. Butler also wrote Hudibras, a mock-heroic poem. His skeptical, witty prose influenced later writers such as George Bernard Shaw and E. M. Forster. Butler's legacy lies in his sharp social criticism and his role as a precursor to modernist thought.