Samuel Butler Author of Erewhon A memoir Vol. I & II

Samuel Butler Author of Erewhon A memoir 1968 two superb volumes ! Octogon.
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Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835-1885): A Memoir - Vol. 1
Samuel Butler Author of Erewhon,(1885-1916): A Memoir - Vol. 2
By Henry Festing Jones
Publication date 1968
Topics Butler, Samuel, 1835-1902
Publisher New York : Octagon Books

448 pp. & 531 pp.
Henry Festing Jones
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Excerpt Vol. I

SAMUEL BUTLER, author of Erewhon , was born on the 4th December 1835, at Langar Rectory, near Bingham in Nottinghamshire. His father was the Rev. Thomas Butler, F.R.G.S., then Rector of Langar-with-Bramston, and his grandfather was Dr. Samuel Butler, the famous head-master of Shrewsbury School, afterwards Bishop of Lichfield. His mother was Fanny Worsley, daughter of Philip John Worsley of Arno's Vale, Bristol, sugar refiner.

The Butlers come of an old Warwickshire yeoman family. The earliest entry relating to them records the marriage on the 12th April 1580 of Henry Butler of Cawston, near Dunchurch, with Alice West of Toft, also near Dunchurch. The parish registers do not go back earlier than 1580, but after that year many entries relating to the family occur until 1693 when William Butler, whon we may call William Butler I., of Thurlaston, and Alice, his wife, had two children baptized at Dunchurch, namely on the 17th September a daughter, Alice, and on the 14th October a son, William, who had been born in 1690 and whom we may call William Butler II. Then the family moved to Kenilworth where William Butler I., after serving as one of the Surveyors of Highways, as Overseer of the Poor, and as Churchwarden, died in 1709. He was buried at Kenilworth and is described in the register as "Yeoman."

His son, William Butler II., was the grandfather of . . .
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Excerpt Vol. II

THE Way of All Flesh was, as the reader will have observed, altered and re-written in accordance with Miss Savage's criticisms and suggestions; and so intimately was it connected with her that, after her death, Butler could not bring himself to work on it any more; nevertheless, until the end of his life, he always intended to do so. Begun in 1873 and not touched after 1885 it is one of the books--perhaps the principal book--he had in mind when, in 1898, he wrote this sentence in the account of the relations between himself and Pauli:

If in my books, from Erewhon [1872] to Luck or Cunning? [1887] there is a something behind the written words which the reader can feel but not grasp--and I fancy that this must be so-- it is due, I believe, to the sense of wrong which was omnipresent with me, not only in regard to Pauli, the Darwins, and my father, but also in regard to my ever-present anxiety about money.

In the Appendix is given a chronology of the novel and also a list of addenda. The chronology was made in the course of re-writing the book because he found he was liable to forget the dates, and so, to avoid contradicting himself, he made a statement for reference, to which perhaps he did not strictly adhere. In the addenda he put notes of things to be inserted, which were perhaps not all inserted when the time came.

In form the story is, like the Book of Job and the Odyssey , that of the good man passing through trials and coming out triumphant in the end. Ernest is sustained by faith in "a something as yet but darkly known which . . .