Samuel Butler

Over the span of a century, the Pontifex family is populated by manipulative and domineering characters attempting to control the fate of the next generation. In The Way of All Flesh, Ernest Pontifex tries to pursue a righteous path but is met with painstaking hardships. Ernest is the son of Theobald and Christina Pontifex, who are prominent members of the religious order. Ernest attempts to follow in their footsteps, embracing theology and becoming a clergyman. Yet, his position is short-lived as he discovers corruption in the High Church and loses most of his earnings. In the midst of his troubles, Ernest questions the importance of titles, status and family tradition. He travels down a rocky road that tests his faith in both man and God. The Way of All Flesh is a scathing commentary on the hypocritical views and expectations of Victorian society. Butler was praised for his exploration of a destructive family dynamic. It’s an erratic tale and one of the most iconic novels of the early twentieth century. With an eye-catching new cover, and professionally typeset manuscript, this edition of The Way of All Flesh is both modern and readable.

Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement," Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood satirizes Victorian hypocrisy in its chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex. Along the way, it offers a powerful indictment of 19th-century England's major institutions. We are delighted to publish this classic book as part of our extensive Classic Library collection. Many of the books in our collection have been out of print for decades, and therefore have not been accessible to the general public. The aim of our publishing program is to facilitate rapid access to this vast reservoir of literature, and our view is that this is a significant literary work, which deserves to be brought back into print after many decades. The contents of the vast majority of titles in the Classic Library have been scanned from the original works. To ensure a high quality product, each title has been meticulously hand curated by our staff. Our philosophy has been guided by a desire to provide the reader with a book that is as close as possible to ownership of the original work. We hope that you will enjoy this wonderful classic work, and that for you it becomes an enriching experience

The Way of All Flesh (1903) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler that attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family. Butler dared not publish it during his lifetime, but when it was published it was accepted as part of the general reaction against Victorianism. In 1998, the Modern Library ranked The Way of All Flesh twelfth on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century.

The Fair Haven by Samuel Butler. The Fair Haven is an ironical defense of Christianity, which under the guise of orthodox zeal undermines its miraculous foundations. To find the germ of The Fair Haven we should probably have to go back to the year 1858, when Butler, after taking his degree at Cambridge, was preparing himself for holy orders by acting as a kind of lay curate in a London parish. Butler never took things for granted, and he felt it to be his duty to examine independently a good many points of Christian dogma which most candidates for ordination accept as matters of course. The result of his investigations was that he eventually declined to take orders at all. One of the stones upon which he then stumbled was the efficacy of infant baptism, and I have no doubt that another was the miraculous element of Christianity, which, it will be remembered, was the cause of grievous searchings of heart to Ernest Pontifex in Butler

The Life and Letters of Dr. Samuel Butler - Head-master of Shrewsbury School 1798-1836. Vol. 1 is an unchanged, high-quality reprint of the original edition of 1896. Hansebooks is editor of the literature on different topic areas such as research and science, travel and expeditions, cooking and nutrition, medicine, and other genres. As a publisher we focus on the preservation of historical literature. Many works of historical writers and scientists are available today as antiques only. Hansebooks newly publishes these books and contributes to the preservation of literature which has become rare and historical knowledge for the future.