Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler was a Victorian-era author whose most famous works were Erewhon, a utopian satire; The Way of All Flesh, a semi-autobiographical novel that was published posthumously; and his translations of the Odyssey and the Iliad. Butler was born in 1835 in Nottinghamshire, England, to the Rev. Thomas Butler and his wife. Butler was a good student, but had an adversarial relationship with his parents. After graduating from Cambridge, Butler traveled to New Zealand to put distance between himself and his parents; it was here where he wrote his masterpiece, Erewhon. Butler then settled in London, where he would live and continue to write for the rest of his life.