The Way Of All Flesh
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Jacket: No dust jacket - paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
A towering work of Victorian fiction, The Way of All Flesh chronicles four generations of the Pontifex family, laying bare the suffocating hypocrisy, religious dogma, and repressive conventions of nineteenth-century English society. Written over decades but published posthumously in 1903, Samuel Butler's semi-autobiographical masterpiece follows Ernest Pontifex, a young man crushed under the weight of his tyrannical father's expectations and the cruel pieties of the Church, as he struggles toward hard-won self-liberation. Butler argues with savage wit and unflinching clarity that inherited tradition and parental authority are as likely to destroy a soul as to nurture it. The novel's biting satire of evangelicalism and bourgeois respectability was decades ahead of its time, profoundly influencing later writers such as George Bernard Shaw and E.M. Forster. Rich in irony and psychological acuity, it remains one of the most radical and entertaining novels of the English canon.
Author: Samuel Butler
Format: Paperback
Published: 1971, Penguin English Library
Genre: Classic fiction
Condition remarks:
Condition: Good to fair. Jacket: No dust jacket - paperback. Page Condition: Good - possible tanning. Markings: possible previous owner inscription.
A towering work of Victorian fiction, The Way of All Flesh chronicles four generations of the Pontifex family, laying bare the suffocating hypocrisy, religious dogma, and repressive conventions of nineteenth-century English society. Written over decades but published posthumously in 1903, Samuel Butler's semi-autobiographical masterpiece follows Ernest Pontifex, a young man crushed under the weight of his tyrannical father's expectations and the cruel pieties of the Church, as he struggles toward hard-won self-liberation. Butler argues with savage wit and unflinching clarity that inherited tradition and parental authority are as likely to destroy a soul as to nurture it. The novel's biting satire of evangelicalism and bourgeois respectability was decades ahead of its time, profoundly influencing later writers such as George Bernard Shaw and E.M. Forster. Rich in irony and psychological acuity, it remains one of the most radical and entertaining novels of the English canon.