The Way of All Flesh (World's Classics) - Softcover

The Way of All Flesh (1903) `exploded like a bomb' in Edwardian England. Based on Samuel Butler's own life and published posthumously, it indicts Victorian bourgeois values as personified in five generations of the Pontifex family. Butler's satire centres on Ernest Pontifex, an orthodox young man who suddenly sees the falseness of the rules and aspirations forced on him by parents and teachers. He renounces his past morally, religiously, and socially - with startling results. Ernest's passage through self-deception and disgrace to nonchalant, hedonistic wisdom makes this one of the most involving novels of its era. Butler's candour spoke not only to the restless Edwardians, rebelling against the nineteenth century, but also continues to enthral readers today. In his Introduction to this richly annotated edition Michael Mason points out and explains the importance of the personal and public allusions which reverberate through the novel. This book is intended for general readers, those interested in Victorian fiction, students of 19th-century English literature at 6th form, undergraduate and post-graduate level.