Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic
VictorianThe Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire
ErewhonErewhon: or, Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country...
and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously,
The Way of All FleshThe Way of All Flesh is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. It represents a relaxation from the religious outlook from a Calvinistic approach, which is presented as...
. He is also known for examining
ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
orthodoxy, substantive studies of
evolutionary thoughtEvolutionary thought, the conception that species change over time, has roots in antiquity, in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science...
, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler also made prose translations of
The Iliad and
The Odyssey which remain in use to this day.
Early life
He was born at the rectory in the village of
LangarLangar is a small village about four miles south of Bingham in Nottinghamshire and the Vale of Belvoir.-Geography:To the south of the parish of Langar cum Barnstone, on Langar Airfield, it borders Clawson, Hose and Harby, the district of Melton and Leicestershire. At Hose Lane it meets Colston...
, near
BinghamBingham is a market town in the Rushcliffe borough of Nottinghamshire, England.-Geography:With a population of around 9,000 people it lies about nine miles east of Nottingham, a similar distance south-west of Newark-on-Trent and west of Grantham. It is situated where the A46 intersects the A52...
,
NottinghamshireNottinghamshire is a county in the East Midlands of England, bordering South Yorkshire to the north-west, Lincolnshire to the east, Leicestershire to the south, and Derbyshire to the west...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
to the Rev. Thomas Butler, son of
Dr. Samuel ButlerSamuel Butler FRS was an English classical scholar and schoolmaster of Shrewsbury, and Bishop of Lichfield. His grandson was Samuel Butler , noted author of the novel "Erewhon"....
, headmaster of
Shrewsbury SchoolShrewsbury School is a co-educational independent school for pupils aged 13 to 18, founded by Royal Charter in 1552. The present campus to which the school moved in 1882 is located on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...
and eventual
Bishop of LichfieldThe Bishop of Lichfield is the ordinary of the Church of England Diocese of Lichfield in the Province of Canterbury.The diocese covers 4,516 km² of the counties of Staffordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire and West Midlands. The bishop's seat is located in the Cathedral Church of the Blessed...
. Dr. Butler was the son of a tradesman and descended from a line of yeomen, but his scholarly aptitude being recognized at young age was sent to
RugbyRugby School is a co-educational day and boarding school located in the town of Rugby, Warwickshire, England. It is one of the oldest independent schools in Britain.-History:...
and
CambridgeThe University of Cambridge is a public research university located in Cambridge, United Kingdom. It is the second-oldest university in both the United Kingdom and the English-speaking world , and the seventh-oldest globally...
, where he distinguished himself and launched his successful career. His only son Thomas wished to go into the
NavyThe Royal Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the British Armed Forces. Founded in the 16th century, it is the oldest service branch and is known as the Senior Service...
, but succumbed to paternal pressure and entered
the ChurchThe Church of England is the officially established Christian church in England and the Mother Church of the worldwide Anglican Communion. The church considers itself within the tradition of Western Christianity and dates its formal establishment principally to the mission to England by St...
, in which he led a wholly undistinguished career, all the more so in contrast with his father's. It has been suggested that this family dynamic had some impact on Samuel, insofar as it created the oppressive home environment (chronicled in
The Way of All FleshThe Way of All Flesh is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. It represents a relaxation from the religious outlook from a Calvinistic approach, which is presented as...
) which deeply formed his approach to the world. Thomas Butler, states one critic, "to make up for having been a servile son, became a bullying father."
In any event, Samuel Butler's relationship with his parents, and especially with his father, was largely antagonistic. His education began at home, and it included frequent beatings, as was not uncommon at the time. Samuel, however, found his parents particularly "brutal and stupid by nature," and their relationship to him never progressed beyond the adversarial. He later recorded of his father that, "He never liked me, nor I him; from my earliest recollections I can call to mind no time when I did not fear him and dislike him…. I have never passed a day without thinking of him many times over as the man who was sure to be against me." Under his parents' influence, he was set on course to follow his father into the priesthood. He was sent to
ShrewsburyShrewsbury School is a co-educational independent school for pupils aged 13 to 18, founded by Royal Charter in 1552. The present campus to which the school moved in 1882 is located on the banks of the River Severn in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, England...
and then in 1854 went up to
St John's College, CambridgeSt John's College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college's alumni include nine Nobel Prize winners, six Prime Ministers, three archbishops, at least two princes, and three Saints....
, where he obtained a First in
ClassicsClassics is the branch of the Humanities comprising the languages, literature, philosophy, history, art, archaeology and other culture of the ancient Mediterranean world ; especially Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome during Classical Antiquity Classics (sometimes encompassing Classical Studies or...
in 1858 (the graduate society of St John's is named the
Samuel Butler RoomThe Samuel Butler Room Society is the Middle Combination Room of St John's College at the University of Cambridge. The objects of the Society are the representation of the interests of the Graduate Student Members of the College, the internal management of the Samuel Butler Room and the...
(SBR) in his honour).
Career
Following graduation from Cambridge, he lived in a low-income parish in
LondonLondon is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
during 1858 and 1859 as preparation for his
ordinationIn general religious use, ordination is the process by which individuals are consecrated, that is, set apart as clergy to perform various religious rites and ceremonies. The process and ceremonies of ordination itself varies by religion and denomination. One who is in preparation for, or who is...
to the Anglican
clergyClergy is the generic term used to describe the formal religious leadership within a given religion. A clergyman, churchman or cleric is a member of the clergy, especially one who is a priest, preacher, pastor, or other religious professional....
; there he discovered that
baptismIn Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...
made no apparent difference to the morals and behaviour of his peers and began questioning his
faithFaith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or a belief that is not based on proof. In religion, faith is a belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of teachings or a Supreme Being. Generally speaking, it is offered as a means by which the truth of the proposition,...
. This experience would later serve as inspiration for his work
The Fair Haven. Correspondence with his father about the issue failed to set his mind at peace, inciting instead his father's wrath. As a result, in September 1859 he emigrated to
New ZealandNew Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
on the ship
Roman EmperorThe Roman Emperor was a full-rigged ship built in 1848.The Roman Emperor made at least two voyages from England to New Zealand, arriving there in 1860 and 1863. Each voyage carried many immigrants to New Zealand. The novelist Samuel Butler arrived in Christchurch on the Roman Emperor in January...
, regarded as a British colony since the
Treaty of WaitangiThe Treaty of Waitangi is a treaty first signed on 6 February 1840 by representatives of the British Crown and various Māori chiefs from the North Island of New Zealand....
between the British Crown and many of the New Zealand Maori chiefs in 1840. Butler went there like many early British settlers of privileged origins, in order to put as much distance as possible between himself and his family. He wrote about his arrival and his life as a sheep farmer on Mesopotamia Station in
A First Year in Canterbury Settlement (1863), and made a handsome profit when he sold his farm, but the chief achievement of his time in New Zealand was the drafts and source material for much of his masterpiece
ErewhonErewhon: or, Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country...
.
He returned to England in 1864, settling in rooms in
Clifford's InnClifford's Inn was an Inn of Chancery which is located between Fetter Lane and Clifford's Inn Passage, leading off Fleet Street, EC4.Founded in 1344 and dissolved in 1903, most of the original structure was demolished in 1934...
(near
Fleet StreetFleet Street is a street in central London, United Kingdom, named after the River Fleet, a stream that now flows underground. It was the home of the British press until the 1980s...
), where he lived for the rest of his life. In 1872, the utopian novel
ErewhonErewhon: or, Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country...
appeared anonymously, causing some speculation as to the identity of the author. When Butler revealed himself as the author,
Erewhon made Butler a well-known figure, more because of this speculation than for its literary merits which are today undisputed.
His father's death in 1886 resolved his financial problems for the last six years of his own life. He indulged himself, holidaying in
ItalyItaly , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
every summer and producing while he was there his works on the Italian landscape and art. His close interest in the art of the
Sacri Monti is reflected in
Alps and Sanctuaries of Piedmont and the Canton Ticino (1881) and
Ex Voto (1888).
He wrote a number of other books, including a not so successful sequel,
Erewhon RevisitedErewhon Revisited Twenty Years Later, Both by the Original Discoverer of the Country and by His Son is a satirical novel by Samuel Butler, forming a belated sequel to his Erewhon...
. His
semi-autobiographical novelAn autobiographical novel is a form of novel using autofiction techniques, or the merging of autobiographical and fiction elements. The literary technique is distinguished from an autobiography or memoir by the stipulation of being fiction...
The Way of All Flesh did not appear in print until after his death, as he considered its tone of attack on Victorian hypocrisy too contentious.
Erewhon revealed Butler's long interest in
DarwinCharles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
's theories of biological
evolutionEvolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
. In 1863, four years after Darwin published
On the Origin of Species, the editor of a New Zealand newspaper,
The PressThe Press is a daily broadsheet newspaper published in Christchurch, New Zealand. It is owned by Fairfax Media.- History :The Press was first published on 25 May 1861 from a small cottage in Montreal Street, making it the oldest surviving newspaper in the South Island of New Zealand. The first...
, published a letter captioned "
Darwin among the Machines"Darwin among the Machines" appeared as the heading of an article published in The Press newspaper on 13 June 1863 in Christchurch, New Zealand...
." Signed
CellariusCellarius is the Latin form of cellerar, an office within a medieval Benedictine abbey. As a surname it is usually a Latinized form of the German name Keller:* Ludwig Cellarius, d.1526, Ludwig Keller of Basel, first husband of Wibrandis Rosenblatt...
, it was written by Butler; it compares human evolution to machine evolution, prophesizing (half in jest) that machines would eventually replace man in the supremacy of the earth: "In the course of ages we shall find ourselves the inferior race." The letter raises many of the themes now being debated by proponents of the
Technological SingularityTechnological singularity refers to the hypothetical future emergence of greater-than-human intelligence through technological means. Since the capabilities of such an intelligence would be difficult for an unaided human mind to comprehend, the occurrence of a technological singularity is seen as...
, namely, that computers are evolving much faster than biological humans and that we are racing toward an unknowable future with explosive technological change.
Butler also spent a great deal of time criticising Darwin, and this criticism was motivated partly because Butler (himself a man living in the shadow of a previous Samuel Butler) believed that Darwin had not sufficiently acknowledged his grandfather
Erasmus DarwinErasmus Darwin was an English physician who turned down George III's invitation to be a physician to the King. One of the key thinkers of the Midlands Enlightenment, he was also a natural philosopher, physiologist, slave trade abolitionist,inventor and poet...
's contribution to the origins of his theory.
George Bernard ShawGeorge Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...
and E.M. Forster were great admirers of the latter Samuel Butler, who brought a new tone into Victorian literature and began the long tradition of New Zealand utopian/dystopian literature that would culminate in works by
Jack Ross (writer)Dr Jack Ross is a poet, novelist, translator, editor and lecturer in creative writing. A trilogy of novels has been published by two different publishers, Alan Brunton's Bumper Books and Titus Books .-Biography:...
,
William DireenWilliam Direen is a New Zealand-born writer and musician whose work includes poetry, fiction, songs and music-theatre pieces. He was 2010 Fellow at the Michael King Writers Centre in Auckland, New Zealand and has been musical designer/manager of a music group The Bilders since...
and Scott Hamilton.
Literary history and criticism
Butler developed a theory that the
OdysseyThe Odyssey is one of two major ancient Greek epic poems attributed to Homer. It is, in part, a sequel to the Iliad, the other work ascribed to Homer. The poem is fundamental to the modern Western canon, and is the second—the Iliad being the first—extant work of Western literature...
came from the pen of a young
SicilianSicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
woman, and that the scenes of the poem reflected the coast of
SicilySicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
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 prose translation of the
Odyssey (1900).
Robert GravesRobert von Ranke Graves 24 July 1895 – 7 December 1985 was an English poet, translator and novelist. During his long life he produced more than 140 works...
elaborated on this hypothesis in his novel
Homer's Daughter. In a lecture titled "The Humour of Homer", delivered at The Working Men's College in London, 1892, Butler argued that Homer's gods in the Iliad are like men but "without the virtue" and that the poet "must have desired his listeners not to take them seriously." Butler translated the
IliadThe Iliad is an epic poem in dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed to Homer. Set during the Trojan War, the ten-year siege of the city of Troy by a coalition of Greek states, it tells of the battles and events during the weeks of a quarrel between King Agamemnon and the warrior Achilles...
(1898). His other works include
Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered (1899), a theory that Shakespeare's
sonnetA sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
s, if rearranged, tell a story about a homosexual affair.
The English novelist
Aldous HuxleyAldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and one of the most prominent members of the famous Huxley family. Best known for his novels including Brave New World and a wide-ranging output of essays, Huxley also edited the magazine Oxford Poetry, and published short stories, poetry, travel...
acknowledged the influence of
ErewhonErewhon: or, Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country...
on his novel
Brave New WorldBrave New World is Aldous Huxley's fifth novel, written in 1931 and published in 1932. Set in London of AD 2540 , the novel anticipates developments in reproductive technology and sleep-learning that combine to change society. The future society is an embodiment of the ideals that form the basis of...
. Huxley's utopian counterpart to
Brave New World,
IslandIsland is the final book by English writer Aldous Huxley, published in 1962. It is the account of Will Farnaby, a cynical journalist who is shipwrecked on the fictional island of Pala. Island is Huxley's utopian counterpart to his most famous work, the 1932 novel Brave New World, itself often...
, also prominently refers to
ErewhonErewhon: or, Over the Range is a novel by Samuel Butler, published anonymously in 1872. The title is also the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed in which part of the world Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country...
.
Assessment
Butler belonged to no school, and spawned no followers during his lifetime. A serious but amateur student of the subjects he undertook, especially religious orthodoxy and
evolutionary thoughtEvolutionary thought, the conception that species change over time, has roots in antiquity, in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science...
, his controversial assertions effectively shut him out from both of the opposing factions of Church and science which played such a large role in late
VictorianThe Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...
cultural life: “In those days one was either a religionist or a
DarwinianDarwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
, but he was neither.” His influence on literature, such as it was, came through
The Way of All Flesh, which Butler completed in the 1880s but left unpublished in order to protect his family. And yet the novel, “begun in 1870 and not touched after 1885, was so modern when it was published in 1903, that it may be said to have started a new school,” particularly in the use of
psychoanalyticalPsychoanalysis is a psychological theory developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Austrian neurologist Sigmund Freud. Psychoanalysis has expanded, been criticized and developed in different directions, mostly by some of Freud's former students, such as Alfred Adler and Carl Gustav...
modes of thought in fiction, which "his treatment of Ernest Pontifex [the hero of Butler's novel] foreshadows."
Whether in his satire and fiction, his studies on the evidences of
ChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
, his works on
evolutionary thoughtEvolutionary thought, the conception that species change over time, has roots in antiquity, in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science...
or in his miscellaneous other writings, however, a consistent theme runs through Butler's work, stemming largely from his personal struggle with the stifling of his own nature by his parents, which led him on to seek more general principles of growth, development and purpose: "What concerned him was to establish his nature, his aspirations and their fulfillment upon a philosophic basis, to identify them with the nature, the aspirations, the fulfillment of all humanity – and more than that – with the fulfillment of the universe . . . His struggle became generalized, symbolic, tremendous." The form that this search took was principally
philosophicPhilosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and – given the interests of the day –
biologicalBiology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
: “Satirist, novelist, artist and critic that he was, he was primarily a philosopher,” and in particular a philosopher who sought the biological foundations for his work: “His biology was a bridge to a philosophy of life which sought a scientific basis for religion and endowed a
naturalisticallyMetaphysical naturalism, also called ontological naturalism and philosophical naturalism, or just naturalism, is a philosophical worldview and belief system that holds that there is nothing but natural elements, principles, and relations of the kind studied by the natural sciences, i.e., those...
conceived universe with a soul.” Indeed, "philosophical writer" was ultimately the self-description Butler himself chose as most fitting to his work.
Biography and criticism
Butler's friend
Henry Festing JonesHenry Festing Jones was the friend and posthumous biographer of Samuel Butler. His biography of Butler, entitled Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon — A Memoir, won the inaugural James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography in 1919....
wrote the authoritative biography: the two-volume
Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835-1902): A Memoir (commonly known as Jones's
Memoir), published in 1919 and now only available from antiquarian booksellers. Project Gutenberg hosts a shorter "Sketch" by Jones. More recently, Peter Raby has written a life:
Samuel Butler: A Biography (Hogarth Press, 1991).
The Way of All Flesh was published after Butler's death by his literary executor, R. Streatfeild, in 1903. This version however altered Butler's text in many ways and cut important material. The actual manuscript was edited by Daniel F. Howard as
Ernest Pontifex, or The Way of All Flesh (Butler's original title) and published for the first time in 1965. For a critical study, mostly about
The Way of All Flesh, see Thomas L. Jeffers,
Samuel Butler Revalued (University Park: Penn State Press, 1981).
External links
in the
Dictionary of New Zealand BiographyThe Dictionary of New Zealand Biography contains biographies for over 3,000 New Zealanders. It is available in both English and Maori. All volumes of the Dictionary of New Zealand Biography are available online....