The Way of All Flesh ~ buying Samuel Butler ~ 1980, Easton Press ~ Leather, Integral Bookmark, Moire Endpapers, Integral Bookmark ~ Near New

The Way of All Flesh

By Samuel Butler

Pictures by Robert Ward Johnson

Introduction by Theodore Dreiser

The 100 Greatest Books Ever Written

Collector's Edition

Bound in Genuine Leather

1980, The Easton Press
Norwalk, Connecticut

Sewn binding. An odd dark dusty green leather over boards with gilt decoration on front and back and design and lettering on spine. Integral ribbon marker sewn in. Three spine hubs. All edges of leaves gilt. Moiré endpapers. 8.25", 588 pages, publisher's preface, introduction, illustrations, an unused Easton Press bookmark (see last image)

As New. A solid, clean copy.

From the Publisher's Preface

The author of "The Way of All Flesh" was born in 1855 in a village near Nottingham in north-central England. He was the namesake of a grandfather who was a bishop, and his father also was a churchman. Butler's college education was at Cambridge University. Though intended for the church, he declined to accept that vocation because of religious doubts, and at the age of twenty-three he emigrated to New Zealand. There he established a sheep farm, ran it with notable success for five years, and returned to England in 1864. By then he had published articles in the British press on Darwinism and other subjects, as well as a book on his experiences in New Zealand.

Having long wished to become a painter, Butler ow settled in London, studied art seriously, and was soon exhibiting regularly at the royal Academy. His fist important book, "Erewhon," was published in 1872; it is a story of a visit to an imaginary world, a Utopia in which the author satirizes the manners of his period. ... Literature is the field on which his reputation rests. And by far his most important work was "The Way of All Flesh." ... It has been described as "the quintessence of its author's commonsense philosophy. It wages war on all extremes, on all shams and pretenses - above all those of which the pretenders are unconscious - on all attempts to take either life of death too seriously. It is full of a faintly bitter irony, which the author turns on occasion against himself as well as his victims. it is caricature, but no book gives a better satiric picture of home life in mid-Victorian England."

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