Samuel Butler, The Way of All Flesh

Amy R. Wong (University of California, Los Angeles)
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Samuel Butler’s

The Way of All Flesh

was written in the years between 1872 and 1884 but was not published until 1903, a year after Butler’s death, largely because the novel is Butler’s most autobiographical and contained a very critical representation of his upbringing by an authoritarian father of strict, high-church principles. Like the novel’s main character, Ernest Pontifex, Butler rebelled against his father, deciding not to take holy orders. While works published during his lifetime, most prominently his utopian novel

Erewhon, Or, Over the Range

(1872), won Butler moderate acclaim during his lifetime, it would be

The Way of All Flesh

that would establish Butler’s place in the literary canon, consolidating Butler’s reputation as a renegade Victorian with its scathing…

2711 words

Citation: Wong, Amy R.. "The Way of All Flesh". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 September 2011 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13298, accessed 19 March 2024.]

13298 The Way of All Flesh 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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