The Way of All Flesh

Samuel Butler

Feb 2006 · Penguin UK

About this ebook

'I am the enfant terrible of literature and science. If I cannot, and I know I cannot, get the literary and scientific big-wigs to give me a shilling, I can, and I know I can, heave bricks into the middle of them.' With The Way of All Flesh, Samuel Butler threw a subversive brick at the smug face of Victorian domesticity. Published in 1903, a year after Butler's death, the novel is a thinly disguised account of his own childhood and youth 'in the bosom of a Christian family'. With irony, wit and sometimes rancour, he savaged contemporary values and beliefs, turning inside-out the conventional novel of a family's life through several generations.

About the author

Richard Hoggart was born in Leeds, England on September 24, 1918. He studied at Leeds University. During World War II, he served as an anti-aircraft gunner in the Royal Artillery. After the war, he worked as an extramural tutor at Hull University for 13 years. In 1951, he published his first book, a full-length study of WH Auden's poetry. His other works include The Uses of Literacy, An Idea and Its Servants, and Townscape with Figures. He taught at several universities including the University of Leicester, the University of Birmingham, and Goldsmiths College in London. He was a decisive witness in the 1960 Lady Chatterley trial, which liberalised British pornography laws and was instrumental in creating BBC2 as a quality television channel. He died on April 10, 2014 at the age of 95.