- Samuel Butler, the author of Erewhon and The Way of All Flesh was born in December of 1835.
- He was born in the village of Langar in England.
- He didn’t get along well with his parents. He found the relationship with his father particularly troubling. He noted 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.”
- Butler graduated from Cambridge in 1858.
- After his graduation, Samuel’s father wanted him to become a priest. However a crisis of faith lead Samuel down a different path. He emigrated to New Zealand and raised sheep instead. He returned to England in 1864.
- Butler made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey which remain in use to this day.
- He died on June 18, 1902 in London.
- The Way of All Flesh is a semi-autobiographical novel and was published posthumously.