Samuel "Erewhon" Butler
| Samuel Butler | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Born |
4 December 1835 Langar, near Bingham, Nottinghamshire, England |
| Died | 18 June 1902 (aged 66) London, England |
| Occupation | Novelist, writer |
| Nationality | English |
Samuel Butler (4 December 1835 – 18 June 1902) was the iconoclastic English author of the Utopian satirical novel Erewhon (1872) and the semi-autobiographical Bildungsroman The Way of All Flesh, published posthumously in 1903. Both have remained in print ever since. In other studies he examined Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art, and made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey that are still consulted today. He was also an artist.
Butler was born on 4 December 1835 at the rectory in the village of Langar, near Bingham, Nottinghamshire, England, to the Rev. Thomas Butler, son of Dr. Samuel Butler, then headmaster of Shrewsbury School and later Bishop of Lichfield. Dr. Butler was the son of a tradesman and descended from a line of yeomen, but his scholarly aptitude being recognised at young age, was sent to Rugby and Cambridge, where he distinguished himself. His only son Thomas wished to go into the Navy, but succumbed to paternal pressure and entered the Church, in which he led an undistinguished career in contrast to his father's. Samuel's immediate family created for him an oppressive home environment (chronicled in The Way of All Flesh). Thomas Butler, states one critic, "to make up for having been a servile son, became a bullying father."
Samuel Butler's relationship with his parents, especially with his father, was largely antagonistic. His education began at home and included frequent beatings, as was not uncommon at the time. Samuel wrote later that his parents were "brutal and stupid by nature." He later recorded that his father "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 Shrewsbury at the age of twelve, where he did not enjoy the hard life under its then headmaster, Benjamin Hall Kennedy, whom he later drew as "Dr Skinner" in The Way of All Flesh. Then in 1854 he went up to St John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a first in Classics in 1858 (the graduate society of St John's is named the Samuel Butler Room (SBR) in his honour).
...
Wikipedia