In 1859, Samuel Butler, a young Cantabrigian out of joint with his family, with the church, and with the times, left England to hew out his own path in New Zealand. At the end of just five years he returned, with a modest fortune in money and an immense fortune in ideas. For out of this self-imposed exile came Erewhon, one of the world's masterpieces of satire, which contained the germ of Butler's intellectual output for the next twenty years. The Cradle of Erewhon is an examination and interpretation of the special ways in which these few crucial years affected Butler's life and work, particularly Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited. It shows us Butler the sheep farmer, explorer, and mountain climber, as well as Butler the newcomer to "The Colonies," accepting—and accepted by—his intellectual peers in the unpioneerlike little city of Christchurch, sharpening and disciplining his mind through his controversial contributions to the Christchurch Press. But more importantly, the book suggests the depth to which New Zealand penetrated the man and reveals new facets of influence hitherto unnoticed in Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited. The Southern Alps ("Oh, Wonderful! Wonderful! so lonely and so solemn"), the perilous rivers and passes, the character and customs of the Maoris—all these blend to afford new insights into a complex book. Butler was not the first to create an imaginary world as asylum from the harsh realities of this one (Vergil did the same in the Eclogues), nor was he the first, even in his own time, to protest against the machine as the enslaver of man, but his became the clearest and the freshest voice. On the biographical side, The Cradle of Erewhon offers new evidence for reappraising the man who for so long has been a psychological and literary puzzle. Why, for instance, did he repudiate his first-born book, A First Year in Canterbury Settlement? And why, once safely away from the entanglements of London, did he voluntarily return to them? Answers to these and other Butlerian riddles are suggested in the engrossing account of the satirist's sojourn in the Antipodes.

This new edition of the Samuel Butler classic, first published in 1872, arrives in honor of its 150th anniversary, and features an updated package and new context for the book from one of today’s great thinkers in science fiction, Annalee Newitz. Setting out to make his fortune in a far-off country, a young traveller discovers the remote and beautiful land of Erewhon and is given a home among its extraordinarily handsome citizens. But their visitor soon discovers that this seemingly ideal community has its faults—here crime is treated indulgently as a malady to be cured, while illness, poverty and misfortune are cruelly punished, and all machines have been superstitiously destroyed after a bizarre prophecy. Can he survive in a world where morality is turned upside down? Inspired by Samuel Butler's years in colonial New Zealand and by his reading of Darwin's Origin of Species, Erewhon is a highly original, irreverent and humorous satire on conventional virtues, religious hypocrisy and the unthinking acceptance of beliefs.

Fascinating and comprehensive in scope, the Dictionary of Real People and Places in Fiction is a valuable source for both students and teachers of literature, and for those interested in locating the facts behind the fiction they read. In a single, scholarly volume, it provides intriguing insight into the real identity of people and places in the novels of over 300 American and British authors published in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

In 'Erewhon', Higgs, a young Englishman, wanders into a long-isolated utopia : In 'Erewhon revisited', Higgs's now-grown son sets out to visit Erewhon himself.

Utopian ventures are worth close attention, to help us understand why some succeed and others fail, for they offer hope for an improved life on earth. Utopias and Utopians is a comprehensive guide to utopian communities and their founders. Some works look at literary utopias or political utopias, etc., and others examine the utopias of only one country: this work examines utopias from antiquity to the present and surveys utopian efforts around the world. Of more than 600 alphabetically arranged entries roughly half are descriptions of utopian ventures; the other half are biographies of those who were involved. Entries are followed by a list of sources and a general bibliography concludes the volume.

This carefully crafted ebook: "EREWHON (Dystopian Classic)" is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. "Erewhon or, Over the Range" is a novel by Samuel Butler which was first published anonymously in 1872. The title of the book refers to the name of a country, supposedly discovered by the protagonist. In the novel, it is not revealed where Erewhon is, but it is clear that it is a fictional country. Butler meant the title to be read as "NOWHERE" backwards even though the letters "h" and "w" are transposed. At first glance, Erewhon appears to be a Utopia, yet it soon becomes clear that this is far from the case. In a 1945 broadcast, George Orwell praised and recommended the book and said that when Butler wrote Erewhon it needed "imagination of a very high order to see that machinery could be dangerous as well as useful." Samuel Butler (1835–1902) was an iconoclastic English author of a variety of works. He is also known for examining Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler also made prose translations of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey that remain in use to this day.

Out Here Down Under is a collection of documents and papers illuminating the development and character of ancient ‎history as a discipline in the Antipodes. It considers especially the distinctive and extraordinarily ‎popular program, championed by E. A. Judge, of studying classical and biblical corpora together under ‎one discipline, with an emphasis on the interpretation of documentary sources. ‎In twenty chapters, this volume considers such issues as the relationship between British and ‎Antipodean scholarship, the story and legacy of Antipodean scholars of the ancient world, the ‎nature and ideology of ancient history programs at schools and universities (especially in NSW ‎and at Macquarie), the interaction between biblical and classical disciplines, and the function of ‎history in contemporary Australia. These texts, mostly written by Judge himself throughout his career, appear here with new introductory notes outlining their historical significance for the discipline and Judge’s own practice.