Talk:Samuel Butler (novelist)

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More information about this article... The following comments have been left for this page: This article isn't bad. But compared to the article in the Encyclopedia Brittanica it appears weak and thin. Samuel Butler is really quite a marvelous figure, not too well known these days, and deserves a richer treatment. The article here is not up to Wikipedia's highest standards I would say.... (edit)

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"Erewhon" as a middle name is an amusing way to disambiguate, but that's a slangy usage not really appropriate for a serious work. Stan 16:57, 15 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Is there really any evidence that he was, sir-reverence, a sodomite?

According to Butler's friend and biographer, Henry Festing Jones, Samuel Butler was homosexual.

That statement is NOT TRUE. I just read Jones's 2-vol biography as well as his short life-sketch at Gutenberg and found nowhere the statement that "Samuel Butler was a homosexual." People should be more careful about their statements here, especially in delicate points like this. Samuel Butler's sexuality--like everything else about him--was complex and mysterious.... —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Ron.

Biography and Criticism

Samuel's friend Henry Festing Jones wrote the authoritative biography: the two-volume Samuel Butler, Author of Erewhon (1835-1902): A Memoir (commonly known as Jones's Memoir), published in 1919 and now only available from antiquarian booksellers. Project Gutenberg [2] hosts a shorter "Sketch" by Jones. More recently, Peter Raby has written a life: Samuel Butler: A Biography (Hogarth Press, 1991). The best edition of The Way of All Flesh (the only authentic one) is edited by Daniel F. Howard as "Ernest Pontifex, or The Way of All Flesh." It first came out in 1965 and is in print again. It, of course, should be the only version read as the early edition of 1903 contained numerous revisions and deletions by the editor at the time. For a critical study, mostly about The Way of All Flesh, see Thomas L. Jeffers, Samuel Butler Revalued (University Park: Penn State Press, 1981).

Roy Harmon 18:13, 13 April 2006 (UTC)