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    The Way of All Flesh
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    The Way of All Flesh
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    The Way of All Flesh
    Ebook567 pages11 hours

    The Way of All Flesh

    By Samuel Butler

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Written between 1873 and 1884 and published posthumously in 1903, The Way of All Flesh is regarded by some as the first twentieth-century novel. Samuel Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood shines an iconoclastic light on the hypocrisy of a Victorian clerical family's domestic life. It also foreshadows the crumbling of nineteenth-century bourgeois ideals in the aftermath of the First World War, as well as the ways in which succeeding generations have questioned conventional values.
    Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement," this chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex spans four generations, focusing chiefly on the relationship between Ernest and his father, Theobald. Written in the wake of Darwin's Origin of Species, it reflects the dawning consciousness of heredity and environment as determinants of character. Along the way, it offers a powerfully satirical indictment of Victorian England's major institutions—the family, the church, and the rigidly hierarchical class structure.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDover Publications
    Release dateMay 23, 2012
    ISBN9780486114552
    Author

    Samuel Butler

    Samuel Butler (1835-1901) was an English novelist, essayist, and critic whose satire Erewhon (1872) foreshadowed the collapse of the Victorian illusion of eternal progress and influenced every significant writer of utopian/dystopian fiction that followed. His autobiographical novel, The Way of All Flesh (1903), is generally considered a masterpiece.

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    Reviews for The Way of All Flesh

    3.5/5

    340 ratings10 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is becoming a lost classic. It is very specific, very English novel that surprisingly captures enduring human feeling, from politicians that are too good to how it feels when you can no longer return to a place where you lived.
    • 2/5
      I did not appreciate the author's sneering attitude to things, as I recall
    • 2/5
      At first I was really enjoying this book, for I like the prolixity of Victorian novels and their comments on society. However, as the story of Ernest Pontifex wore on, and on and on, I found too much philosophizing with only occasional bits of dialogue, action and humor to break it up. The book was not published until 1903, years after the author's death, and is a good argument for the editor's blue pencil, which might have improved it. It was a book that was supposed to blow the lid off the Victorian family, not to mention the Church and society in general. Anyone who's read Anne Perry's Victorian historical mysteries will have come across far worse things happening to children in perfectly respectable families than anything that happens to Ernest. The narrator's voice grates more and more as he allows himself to give way to his desire to philosophize. I'd much rather be reading Trollope.
    • 4/5
      The Way of All Flesh tells the story of the Pontifax family over four generations, focusing on the last two generations, the loathsome Theobald and his son George. I loved the book. It is a sarcastic, scathing indictment of nearly every aspect of society. It is one of the funniest books I have ever read.
    • 5/5
      I read this back in the early 80s. If I happen to find a review I wrote at that time I will add it. I remember liking the book very much
    • 1/5
      My second pass of this much-acclaimed early 20th century novel, and now I remember why I didn't remember -- verbose, pompous writing, author-intrusive and a window into Butler's navel.
    • 5/5
      I've always been fond of erudite books where the author isn't afraid to digress in order to tell you something insightful or just simply interesing, and Butler's most famous novel is a great example. His story follows the life of a young man, an everyman who carries in him Butler's beliefs, and reflects the society he lived in.
    • 4/5
      The 19th century novel tells a story of six generations of the Pontifexes through a disinterested narrator, Mr. Overton. The narration is both brilliant and flawed as Overton has access to even the inner thoughts of the characters. Brilliant because it is as if Mr. Overton is Ernest Pontifex, the protagonist, like how when you ask for advice, you would say, "My friend has this problem," and that "friend" is you. But if this is a veiled autobiography, then we must know that Overton is prejudiced and inaccurate about his evaluation of the characters.The dark-humored, Daniel-Defoesque novel starts off very slowly but the third volume of the book picks up and is in fact quite exciting. There are two great flaws which prevent the novel from being canonical: it has too many references to politicans, theologians, scientists and poets in 19th century so contemporary readers will fail to understand the book; and as an invective against against society and religion, this book uses the rhetoric of religion (didactic cant), which fails.
    • 5/5
      this book is a magnificent satire right up there with jonathan swift. it is a 19th century mommy dearest.
    • 3/5
      The first and last few chapters are great...unfortunately, the middle of the book happens.Still, it has one of my favorite quotes from any book (its in one of the first few chapters): "We must judge men not so much by what they do, as by what they make us feel that they have it in them to do."