Items related to The Way of all Flesh
Synopsis
'The Way of All Flesh' 'exploded like a bomb' in Edwardian England. Based on Samuel Butler's own life & published posthumously, it indicts Victorian bourgeois values as personified in five generations of the Pontifex family.
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About the Author
Samuel Butler (1835 –1902) was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the Utopian satire Erewhon and the posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh. He is also known for examining Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler also made prose translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey which remain in use to this day. Butler belonged to no school, and spawned no followers during his lifetime. A serious but amateur student of the subjects he undertook, especially religious orthodoxy and evolutionary thought, his controversial assertions effectively shut him out from both of the opposing factions of Church and science which played such a large role in late Victorian cultural life. His influence on literature, such as it was, came through The Way of All Flesh, which Butler completed in the 1880s but left unpublished in order to protect his family. Whether in his satire and fiction, his studies on the evidences of Christianity, his works on evolutionary thought or in his miscellaneous other writings, however, a consistent theme runs through Butler's work, stemming largely from his personal struggle with the stifling of his own nature by his parents, which led him on to seek more general principles of growth, development and purpose: "What concerned him was to establish his nature, his aspirations and their fulfillment upon a philosophic basis, to identify them with the nature, the aspirations, the fulfillment of all humanity – and more than that – with the fulfillment of the universe . . . His struggle became generalized, symbolic, tremendous." The form that this search took was principally philosophic and – given the interests of the day – biological: “Satirist, novelist, artist and critic that he was, he was primarily a philosopher,” and in particular a philosopher who sought the biological foundations for his work: “His biology was a bridge to a philosophy of life which sought a scientific basis for religion and endowed a naturalistically conceived universe with a soul.” Indeed, "philosophical writer" was ultimately the self-description Butler himself chose as most fitting to his work.
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The Way of all Flesh
Seller: HPB-Emerald, Dallas, TX, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
mass_market. Condition: Very Good. Connecting readers with great books since 1972! Used books may not include companion materials, and may have some shelf wear or limited writing. We ship orders daily and Customer Service is our top priority! Seller Inventory # S_458522133
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WAY OF ALL FLESH
Published by
Fawcett, New York NY, 1967
ISBN 10: 045150027X
ISBN 13: 9780451500274
Used
Paperback
First Edition
Seller: Gibson's Books, New Hope, AL, U.S.A.
Seller rating 5 out of 5 stars
Paperback. First Edition Thus. Very Good with no dust jacket; Edgewear. ; Introduction by F. W. Dupee.; Mass Market PB; 414 pages. Seller Inventory # 48992
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The Way of All Flesh
Published by
Signet/New American Library, 1960
ISBN 10: 045150027X
ISBN 13: 9780451500274
Used
paperback
First Edition
Seller: zenosbooks, San Francisco, CA, U.S.A.
Seller rating 4 out of 5 stars
paperback. No Jacket. First Edition. New York. 1960. August 1960. Signet/New American Library. 1st Signet Classic Paperback Edition. Some Pen Markings Inside, Otherwise Very Good in Slightly Worn Wrappers. 045150027x. Afterword By J. Sherwood Weber. 384 pages. paperback. CD27. keywords: Signet Classic Europe England Literature 19th Century. DESCRIPTION - This devastating indictment of Victorian values presents an ironic and incisive portrait, of a determined, young man in revolt against father, religion, society, self. In describing Ernest Pontifex's flight to freedom, Samuel Butler illustrated the emotional and intellectual experiences of every artist who educates himself through trial and error. He created a novel that was to inspire, in spirit and form, the works of such writers as Somerset Maugham, James Joyce, Thomas Wolfe. George Bernard Shaw was deeply influenced by Butler's ideas on religion and money. In his preface to Major Barbara, Shaw recorded this debt and called Butler 'a man of genius' who was 'in his own department, the greatest English writer of the latter half of the nineteenth century.' inventory #31241 Some Pen Markings Inside, Otherwise Very Good in Slightly Worn Wrappers. Seller Inventory # z31241