Samuel Butler Paintings

Samuel Butler was an English novelist and critic, born on December 4, 1835, in Langar, near Bingham, Nottinghamshire, England. He was the son of the Reverend Thomas Butler and Fanny Worsley. Butler came from a line of clergy and was expected to follow in their footsteps, but he pursued a different path. He was educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Cambridge, where he obtained a degree in Classics.

After graduating, Butler lived in a low-income neighborhood in London while pursuing a career in painting, which was met with limited success. In 1859, he emigrated to New Zealand, where he established a successful sheep farm. During his time in New Zealand, he began to question Victorian society and the religious orthodoxy he had been raised to accept. This period of his life was crucial in shaping his later critical and satirical writings.

Butler returned to England in 1864 and settled in London, where he took up writing while continuing to paint. He made a modest living from investments and occasional art sales, which allowed him to focus on his literary career. His first significant work, 'Erewhon,' a satirical utopian novel, was published anonymously in 1872. The book quickly gained popularity for its clever inversion of Victorian norms and its critique of societal hypocrisy. It was followed by a sequel, 'Erewhon Revisited,' in 1901.

In 1878, Butler published 'Life and Habit,' an essay that argued for a quasi-Lamarckian theory of evolution, which was contrary to the Darwinian view prevalent at the time. This work was part of a broader critique of Darwinian evolutionary theory, which Butler continued in other writings, notably 'Evolution, Old and New' (1879) and 'Unconscious Memory' (1880).

Butler's most famous novel, 'The Way of All Flesh,' was published posthumously in 1903. Written between 1873 and 1884, it was considered too controversial to publish during his lifetime. The semi-autobiographical novel attacks Victorian hypocrisy and anticipated many of the techniques and themes of modern literature. It has since been recognized as a classic and a significant precursor to the 20th-century literary movement.

Despite his achievements, Butler was largely ignored by the literary establishment during his lifetime, and his work gained more prominence only after his death. He died on June 18, 1902, in London. Today, Butler is regarded as an innovative thinker and writer whose works continue to be studied for their forward-looking views on a range of topics, from social norms to the nature of consciousness.