An Historical And Critical Review Of Samuel Butler S Literary Works

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Samuel Butler was son and grandson of the priests. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1858. He got carried away by music and drawing. Torn with his father, in 1859-1864 he lived in New Zealand, bred sheep. He became an ardent devotee of Darwinism, his views spelled out in a study of Life and Habit (1877). Returning to England, engaged in literature and painting, lived a hermit. Traveled to Italy and Sicily. He exhibited paintings in the Royal Academy, wrote about Italian art. His prose was highly appreciated by Forster and Shaw, and later by Joyce, Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Maugham, George Orwell. Extremely frank autobiographical novel "The Way of All Flesh" (The Way of All Flesh) was completed by the author in the 1880s, but at the author's will was not published during his lifetime and was published only in 1903. Six volumes of his notebooks were also published, correspondence. FS Fitzgerald on the back of the title page of this book Butler wrote with his hand: "The most interesting human document of all available".

Excerpt from Samuel Butler: A Critical Study Outside art there is little in human life or institutions to show that men need more than cunning to maintain their ascendancy in the universal struggle. Imagination is so rare that it would seem to be merely a surplus of mental energy in individuals, of no immediate social value, and in the long run no more than a balm to leaven the lump. So long as men can satisfy their natural necessities and keep up appearances before their neighbours they are content, and, if they are bored, they will avenge themselves in quarrels and cruelty. The few individuals who are gifted with imagination are, by the gift, removed from the common life and incapacitated for it. The very few pursue their creative desire regardless of it and take the surface happenings of life (even love) as they come. Others escape from the ordinary stupid egoism of the human animal into a pride of intellect which is a more ruthless and a nobler egoism. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.