Samuel Butler (4 December 1835 – 18 June 1902) was an iconoclastic Victorian-era English author who published a variety of works. Two of his most famous pieces are the
Utopian satire
Erewhon and a semi-autobiographical novel published posthumously,
The Way of All Flesh. 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 made prose translations of the
Iliad and
Odyssey, which remain in use to this day.