Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) was an English novelist, essayist and critic of Victorian orthodoxy. The son and grandson of clergymen, he refused ordination and spent five years sheep-farming in New Zealand, the setting of Erewhon (1872), his satirical account of a hidden nation where machines are banned and illness is a crime. He quarreled with Darwin over the role of design in evolution in Life and Habit and Evolution, Old and New, argued that the Odyssey was written by a Sicilian woman, and translated Homer into plain prose. His autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh, an attack on the Victorian family, appeared only after his death and made his reputation.