The Way of All Flesh - Forgotten Books Author:Samuel Laura Butler The Way of All Flesh (1903) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. It represents the diminishment of religious outlook from a Calvinistic approach, which is presented as harsh. Butler dared not publish it during his... more » lifetime, but when it was published it was accepted as part of the general revulsion against Victorianism.
The story is narrated by Mr. Overton who was born in 1802, son of a clergyman in Palem, England, a town about 50 miles from London. He is 80 years old at the end of the novel and has known the children of George Pontifex all his life and attended Cambridge College with both John and Theobald Pontifex. Overton is a playwright and moderately wealthy. He is 2nd Godfather to Theobald's son Ernest and he takes a particular, caring and lifelong interest in Ernest's life. (Quote from wikipedia.org)
About the Author
Samuel 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« less