Erewhon (Wordsworth Collection)

Butler, Samuel

ISBN 10: 1853262846 / ISBN 13: 9781853262845

Published by Wordsworth Editions Ltd (edition ), 1998

About this Item

The item might be beaten up but readable. May contain markings or highlighting, as well as stains, bent corners, or any other major defect, but the text is not obscured in any way.

Seller Inventory # 1853262846-7-1

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Erewhon (Wordsworth Collection)
• Publisher: Wordsworth Editions Ltd (edition )
• Publication Date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1853262846
• ISBN 13: 9781853262845
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: Fair

About this title

Synopsis

In this privately published work (1872), written in the tradition of Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, English novelist, essayist, and iconoclast Samuel Butler (1835-1902) describes an imaginary visit to a topsy-turvy country called Erewhon (an anagram of "nowhere"), where it is a punishable offense to be physically ill, but where criminality and immorality are looked kindly upon as treatable diseases. The English church is pilloried in the system of "Musical Banks, " whose currency nobody believes in but which everyone pretends to value. Universities teach courses on how to say nothing at great length, and all machines have been banned for fear that they will develop through evolution and enslave the citizens. In this and other classic works, including The Way of All Flesh, Butler delighted in attacking the complacency and hypocrisy of Victorian manners and religion.

About the Author

Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was the son of a clergyman. Following a disagreement with his father, he left England to beome a sheep farmer in New Zealand, returning to England in 1864. He published Erewhon anonymously in 1872, and went on to publish several works attacking contemporary scientific ideas, in particular Darwin's theory of natural selection.