Butler argues here that much of inheritance was based on habit, but he also firmly opposes natural selection.

Throws a subversive brick at the smug face of Victorian domesticity. Published in 1903, a year after Butler's death, this novel is a thinly disguised account of his own childhood and youth 'in the bosom of a Christian family'.

Setting out to make his fortune, a young traveller discovers the remote and beautiful land of Erewhon, and is given a home among its handsome citizens. But their visitor soon discovers that this ideal community has its faults... This is a humorous satire on conventional virtues, religious hypocrisy and the unthinking acceptance of beliefs.

Samuel Butler's theory - that the Odyssey was written by a who configured herself in the epic as the Phaeacian princess, Nausicaa - set him on a collision course with all the 'authordoxies' of the, patriarchal establishment of 'Oxbridge' scholarship. New introduction by Tim Whitmarsh.

Unabridged republication of the edition as published by Grant Richards, London, 1903.