Erewhon: Over the Range
Samuel Rucker Butler
Paperback
(Forgotten Books, May 7, 2008)
Based on his experiences in New Zealand, Samuel Butler wrote this account of a visit to a very peculiar utopian (dystopian, actually) society in the vein of Gullivers' Travels. This is not a blueprint for a better world but a means of satirizing the foibles of Victorian English society. Published anonymously in 1872, this book has influenced a number of successive authors, including G.B. Shaw, and a number of New Zealand utopian authors. Aldous Huxley cited Erewhon as a primary source of his own dystopia, Brave New World. (Quote from sacred-texts.com)About the AuthorSamuel Butler (December 4, 1835 - June 18, 1902) was a British writer strongly influenced by his New Zealand experiences. He is best known for his utopian satire Erewhon and his posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh.He was born in Langar Rectory, near Bingham, Nottinghamshire, England, into a long line of clerics, preordained as it were to a career in church in his father's wish and expectation. His father was the Rev. Thomas Butler, Rector of Langar and his mother Fanny (nee Worsley). He went to Shrewsbury School, where his grandfather, also called Samuel, former Bishop of Lichfield and Coventry, had been headmaster before retiring. He then went up to his father's alma mater, St John's College, Cambridge, in 1854, taking a First in Classics in 1858. The graduate society of St. John's is named the Samuel Butler Room (SBR) in his honour. (Quote from wikipedia.org)About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology.http://www.forgottenbooks.org