born Dec. 4, 1835, Langar Rectory, Nottinghamshire, Eng.
died June 18, 1902, London
British novelist, essayist, and critic.
Descended from distinguished clergymen, he grappled for many years with Christianity and evolution, first embracing, then rejecting, Charles Darwin 's theories in his writings. He is best known for The Way of All Flesh (1903), his autobiographical novel that tells, with ruthless wit and lack of sentiment, the story of his escape from the suffocating moral atmosphere of his home circle. In his lifetime his reputation rested on the utopian satire Erewhon (1872), which foreshadowed the end of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress.
Samuel Butler, detail of an oil painting by Charles Gogin, 1896; in the National Portrait Gallery, ...
By courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London