Samuel Butler: 99 books

Butler’s first book, published in 1863, is a lively compilation of letters that he sent to his family while working as a sheep farmer in New Zealand for several years. Financed and edited into book form by Butler’s father, it is a spirited account of Butler’s experiences on the frontier. This volume...

Published in 1878, this is the first book in which Butler attacks Darwinism, and sets out an alternative, neo-Lamarckian theory which explores the role of memory in shaping organisms. Butler initially wrote the book as a tribute and complement to Darwin’s theory. Darwin chose to ignore the attack, but Butler continued to challenge the scientific establishment with three additional books.

This is Butler’s fourth book on his one-sided feud with Darwin wherein he again rejects Darwinism in favor of a neo-Lamarckian evolutionary view. While Butler was growing increasingly self-righteous and resentful over his belief that Darwin was deliberately hiding the truth about evolution, it was to be Butler’s last book on the subject.

Published posthumously in 1904, this collection of essays, taken largely from Butler’s work published in The Universal Review in 1890, covers a wide range of subject matter—reflective of Butler’s diverse interests. Included among the essays are “Ramblings in Cheapside,” “Thought and Language,”...

Since Butler's death in 1902 his fame has spread so rapidly and the world of letters now takes so keen in interest in the man and his writings that no apology is necessary for the republication of even his least significant works. I had long desired to bring out a new edition of his earliest book A FIRST...

Published in 1917, this volume is based on a series of articles published by Butler in the 1870s and revised by him prior to his death.  Here Butler sets forth his conception of the divine, as a evolutionary force that encompasses all living things and tends toward ever-greater unity and self-awareness.

In Erewhon, Butler’s hero Higgs had escaped from Erewhon by means of a balloon. In this 1901 sequel, he returns to find that he is now worshipped as a god.  Butler himself viewed the novel as being "far more wicked than Erewhon," and generations of delighted readers have agreed.

This 1888 volume showcased Butler's encyclopedic knowledge of the art of Northern Italy and helped acquaint a wide English readership with the art of Tabachetti and Gaudenzio Ferrari at Varallo.

As the following dialogue embodies the earliest fruits of Butler's study of the works of Charles Darwin, with whose name his own was destined in later years to be so closely connected, and thus possesses an interest apart from its intrinsic merit, a few words as to the circumstances in which it was published will not be out of place.

A partir de una visión negativa de la teoría de la evolución de Darwin, Butler crea en "Erewhon" una fantasía filosófica sobre un país situado en un lugar remoto del mundo que representa una antítesis de la Inglaterra de su época. Prácticamente todos los usos y costumbres sociales...

Published in 1872, this scathingly satirical utopian novel follows the exploits of a young traveler who finds himself in a strange and remote country where bizarre customs are the rule.  Based on Butler's experiences in New Zealand, and influenced by his reading of Darwin, Erewhon is also notable for its early depiction of machine intelligence.

Purporting to be the work of "the late John Pickard Owen" (with a memoir by his brother), this 1873 satire set out to defend Christianity, but was written so subtly, that many readers, critics, and religious alike failed to recognize it as satire at all. While the first edition was written under a pseudonym,...

Published in 1881, this delightful and insightful travelogue takes readers off the beaten track and into the high, remote places of the Sacri Monti of Piedmont and Lombardy, where forgotten masterpieces of sacred art and architecture await discovery. 

An apparently contradictory yet radically urgent collection of texts tracing the genealogy of a controversial current in contemporary philosophy. Accelerationism is the name of a contemporary political heresy: the insistence that the only radical political response to capitalism is not to protest,...