Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited

By Samuel Butler

In Erewhon, an anagram for "nowhere," sickness is a punishable crime, criminals receive compassionate medical treatment, and machines are banned, lest they evolve and take over. Originally published in 1872, the proto-steampunk novel Erewhon won its author immediate recognition as a satirist. SamuelButler followed in the tradition of Voltaire and Swift in creating Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited, which are widely recognized as the nineteenth century's most important works of their kind.
Entertaining and provocative, these books are unsparing in their treatment of the hypocrisies of Victorian society, taking aim at the family, church, and mechanical "progress." George Orwell, no stranger to the depiction of futuristic societies, noted that at the time of Erewhon's writing the author needed "imagination of a very high order to see that machinery could be dangerous as well as useful." Today's readers will also find the book remarkably prescient in its anticipation of future sociological trends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dover Publications
• Release date: May 11, 2015
• ISBN: 9780486805122

Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler (1835–1902) was an English author whose turbulent upbringing would inspire one of his greatest works, The Way of All Flesh. Butler grew up in a volatile home with an overbearing father who was both mentally and physically abusive. He was eventually sent to boarding school and then St. John's College where he studied Classics. As a young adult, he lived in a parish and aspired to become a clergyman but had a sudden crisis of faith. He decided to travel the world and create new experiences fueling his literary career.

Reviews for Erewhon and Erewhon Revisited

[sasham-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

There is a lot that is still relevant and many point that will make you think. While it may have been written as a study / satire of Victorian life and morals there are may points that will make you think - eg. getting rid of the machines because they will eventually evolve to superceed us has echoes in Issac Asimov's works. The whole extreme vegetarian thing that a professor takes to extremes in order to bring to a head the stupid punishments for eating meat and the rationalisations that got the Erewhonians there in the first place - this would be a great book club or school essay book.
On the down side several chapters JUST DRAG!

[autumnesf · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Too boring to review.

[robert.zimmermann · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I wasn't sure what I was getting into when opening the book. I picked it up randomly one day a few years ago knowing I'd eventually read it. In ways I'm glad I did, in other ways I could have gone without it. There wasn't anything wrong with the story, aside from the last several chapters being accounts of histories of the culture the main character stumbled upon. With that said, the chapters on the machines really caught my attention. This book was published in 1872 and shows a prediction of "robots" or machines being the dominant "beings" on the planet at some future time. It also goes into how like organic organisms machinery can be. This is a unique view on the topic to me. I'm sure it's been brought up before; science fiction has much to say about the topic, but for this time period it awakened me to a new view on what people thought back then. There was also the discussion on whether or not meat/plants should be consumed. I found that quite funny due to the rise in vegetarianism in today's world. All in all, this book wasn't terrible. It's a bit slow because of it's age and how slowly I read older books due to difference in language. But it's not entirely a waste of time.

[baswood · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Erewhon - Samuel Butler"My publisher wishes me to say a few words about the genesis of the work, a revised and enlarged edition of which he is herewith laying before the public.Having now, I fear, at too great length done what I was asked to do, I should like to add a few words on my own account.  I am still fairly well satisfied with those parts of “Erewhon” that were repeatedly rewritten, but from those that had only a single writing I would gladly cut out some forty or fifty pages if I could."This is from Butler's preface from the 1901 edition of a book that was originally published in 1872 and I wish he had cut out some of those pages as I found much of the writing quite laboured. It all starts well enough with the narrator (Higgs) describing a journey over a mountain range to discover the hidden world of Erewhon. He travels with a native (Chowbok) but finds himself abandoned when Chowbok heads back to the sheep railhead in fear of his life. The journey across the mountains is exciting and well told as is the initial meeting with the beautiful race of Erewhonians. However the meat of the book is the description of the culture and society that Higgs has discovered. The format of the book is very similar to Edward Bulwer-Lytton's The Coming Race which had been published a year previously (1871) and like that book the author seems to forget that he is telling a story and launches into a description of an imaginary culture, while leaving his narrator as little more than a fly on the wall role.The most striking differences in the culture of Erewhon that Higgs finds is their belief in an outward show of beauty and bodily health and an absence of machines. Illness is treated as a crime and so people go to great lengths to hide their illnesses or disabilities. The people as a whole are skilled in the art of sophistry as is the author Samuel Butler who is able to draw out false conclusions from laboured descriptions of events. I found the explanations of the reasons why the Erewhonians do what they do tedious and uninspired. The book has been described as a satire on Victorian society, but for me the satire was neither comic enough nor sharp enough to hit its targets. A good example of the sophistic nature of Butler's arguments is near the start of his three chapters on the use of machines:"Assume for the sake of argument that conscious beings have existed for some twenty million years: see what strides machines have made in the last thousand!"An interesting thought but from this premise Butler goes on to show why the Erewhonians finally came to the conclusion that machines should be destroyed to stop them from taking over. Back in 1872 when this book was first published this may have been a new line of thought and might have stirred up worries about the future, but Butlers three chapters of overstretched theories would not convince anyone. Before he picks up the narrative of Higgs' escape there is time for two chapters which might seem prophetic when read today: The Rights of animals and the rights of vegetables, but as previously it is difficult to understand whether the satire is directed at the Erewhonians or Victorian England especially when Butler starts his chapters with:"It will be seen from the foregoing chapters that the Erewhonians are a meek and long-suffering people, easily led by the nose, and quick to offer up common sense at the shrine of logic"Butler continues to make the point that the Erewhonian society was based on faddism, they had developed dissembling into an art form, but even after the authors many chapters I could not see how it could possibly work. Higgs only interests seems to have been how he could prove that they were one of the 12 lost tribes of Israel and how he could convert them to Christianity. When he finally escaped he launched a scheme where they could be invaded and used for slave labour. He says:" I will guarantee that I convert the Erewhonians not only into good Christians but into a source of considerable profit to the shareholders." I understand that Butler's targets were religion, use of machinery, appearance, dishonesty and illogicality, even exploitation and colonialism, perhaps capitalism, but the reader has to work very hard wading through Butler's prose to piece together his arguments, which can be contradictory.Very dry and I couldn't get in tune with Butler's prose and I had this nagging suspicion that I was missing something, but I could not summon up the enthusiasm to go back over and find out what that was. Offensive to the LGTB community? depends if you think it is satire. 3 stars.

[jigarpatel-6 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Thinly plotted satire. The novel is dominated by philosophical musings, posed as description of an isolated society. It is worth reading alone for the three chapters on machines and their place in evolutionary history (yes, machines and evolution!), but it also covers topics such as religion, moral education and penal systems. Some of the discussions are far ahead of their time. Largely underrated, Erewhon has encouraged me to read more about Samuel Butler and some of his non-fiction works.To give some background on the author, Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic polymath, widely read and widely travelled for his time. He studied Mathematics at Cambridge, ended up graduating in Classics; translated The Iliad and The Odyssey; memorised all Shakespeare's sonnets; studied the Bible in preparation for entering the clergy, instead became a sheep farmer in New Zealand; studied art, was a skilled artist himself; loved Handel, composed music in some of his spare time; criticised Darwin, yet held him in high regard while propounding his own theories. As a novelist, almost as an aside, Erewhon influenced Aldous Huxley (Brave New World, Island), while The Way of All Flesh attracted the praise of three of my favourite authors: E. M. Forster, George Orwell and Theodore Dreiser.

[soylentgreen23 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I loved Butler's 'The Way of All Flesh', but to be frank I found this one more work than it was worth, and really struggled to the end. I love the idea - sending up social and religious mores by reflecting them in a society where up is down, left is right (and where being sick makes you a criminal, and the possession of any technological device can get you in real trouble), but unlike Swift - who accomplished much the same thing in Gulliver's Travels - you never really feel carried along for the ride by Butler. And that's the problem - this is a novel that feels much more like a textbook than like a story book, and after having sat through my own schooling like anyone at the College of Unreason, I'm rather glad not to have to do that anymore.

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Somewhat redolent of "Gulliver's Travels", and certainly ancestor of a great deal of later Science fiction, one should read this vision of English society viewed through a mythical-kingdom looking glass. You can still find some ripples of this book battering the shores of the Sci-Fi pond!

[greatbookescapes · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book turns the world upside down, inside out. It explores our beliefs and consequences for them. Very evocative for the day.

[eyejaybee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Samuel Butler’s Erewhon, first published in 1872, is a natural descendant of Sir Thomas More’s Utopia [even down to the title making clear that the land in question doesn’t exist (‘Erewhon’ being an anagram of ‘nowhere’)] and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels.Related in the first person, Butler’s protagonist Higgs seeks his fortune in one of Britain’s then numerous far flung dependencies, where after a few years learning his trade as a shepherd he decides to strike out on his own, venturing into the previously unexplored hinterland. Butler himself lived and worked for several years in New Zealand, and the narrative gives many hints that this was the model for the unspecified territory of the book. After some hair raising adventures he manages to penetrate into previously unknown lands, though he is initially dismayed to find them populated by a foreign race of inordinately beautiful people.The alien race is as amazed at the prospect of this bold stranger suddenly appearing among them as he is to find the land inhabited. Over the next few months he came to know the people and was introduced to the higher echelons of its society. He learns that the land is called Erewhon. Initially engaged by the society that the Erewhonians have developed, he gradually becomes disillusioned at what he sees as a moral inversion within their prevailing social mores.Butler handles the opening chapters of the book, from Higgs’s decision to find his fortune overseas to his discovery of the Erewhonians, very capably. The novel seems to be an engaging adventure story, and the struggles that the hero faces as he strives to make his way further inland are genuinely exciting. Similarly, the initial chapters recounting his meeting with the Erewhonians, and the amusing mutual confusions that arise between them, work well. Unfortunately, though, he fell into the frequent trap of labouring the point to the extent of alienating his reader. The Erewhonians have a completely different outlook on life, viewing sickness as a crime with an inclination to punish the sufferer rather than offering them sympathy and support. Though an amusing idea, and a clever mechanism to allow Butler to expound his own views, this soon became simply irritating, like a Monty Python sketch that has gone on far too long. To the modern reader, Butler’s use of anagrams or even plain reversals of names becomes rather tedious. One of the first women whom Higgs comes to know is called Yram (i.e. ‘Mary’ backwards), while one of the principal characters among the Erewhonians is a businessman call Nosnibor Senoj – which is ‘Robinson Jones’ backwards.The story is far from being without merit, though, and it is perhaps unfair to subject it to the scrutiny afforded by jaded twenty-first century cynicism. A principal tenet of the Erewhonians is their intense dislike of machinery (Higgs’s wrist watch causes them considerable dismay). While we might initially think of them as similar to the Amish community, this trait also prefigures the Butlerian Jihad against computers that lay behind Frank Herbert’s Dune sequence.I was glad that I had read it, though I don’t think it will leave me sufficiently enthused to read any of his other works any time soon.

[occassionalread · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

Erewhon is an anagram for Nowhere. Butler's novel is a satire of late 19th century England. Erewhon is a kind of Shangri La, a medieval, European-like country, populated by what might be the lost 13th tribe of Israel. Their customs are odd - they are frozen in time having a deep distrust of technology, they are rational thinkers but esteem hypothetical knowledge over common sense, they punish the sick for the the crime of being ill but consider felony a mere misdemeanor. It's a strange, upside down society, and Butler's descriptions alternate between light humor and parody and deep philosophy. The novel's main weakness is a lack of deep character development; its primary strength its prescience and intellectual heft. If your'e looking for contemporary parody that's more relevant and funnier, I'd steer you to The Onion before recommending this somewhat outdated novel.

[theokester · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Erewhon, as a satire and/or essay, is interesting and has some thought provoking ideas. Erewhon as a novel has a fairly thin but still interesting plot line in an intriguing environment. Unfortunately, meshing the two of these together makes for a difficult book to swallow at times.I enjoyed the thought provoking elements of the satire that Butler presents. He turns the world upside down in order to have us explore just how "civilized" we truly are. He maintains the same basic structure...that a society should have a government with laws that people can be punished for, education to help them in society, religion to help with their conscience. However, he turns all of these "normal" conventions on their heads to get us to think not about the conventions themselves, but about the way we approach them. For example, instead of being punished for what we crimes (theft, murder, etc.), the people of Erewhon are punished if they fall physically ill...sometimes being imprisoned or even sentenced to death. And conversely, if a person finds himself in the throes of robbery or some other 'crime', he is instead consoled and properly treated for the recovery of this behavior and looked on with sympathy from friends and family. In this satirical move, Butler asks us to examine our treatment of criminals. The Erewhonians provide rehabilitation for liars, thieves and murderers while simply shutting away those who commit "crimes" of physical illness. While we profess to offer rehabilitation for our criminals, what good does it do to stick them in an 8x8 box for years and then throw them out on the street with a black mark on their "permanent record?" Which system is better for helping with crime? As to illness, the Erewhonian treatment of illness is definitely ludicrous, but to a small degree it has logic in that it quarantines the truly ill and it also cuts down on people feigning illness or complaining over small headaches. In Erewhon, there is truly very little illness and no 'calling in sick', or making an excuse of "I've got a headache."Butler also satirizes religious devotion (he alludes to religion in terms of the different types of money in the kingdom...the "religious" type having no earthly value yet being esteemed as of great personal worth...and yet citizens of Erewhon barely go through the motions with the 'religious' currency and have a completely different value system for each type of currency).His lengthiest satirical discourse is with regards to the idea of consciousness. He takes it to the absurd (at least for his day) by suggesting a world in which machines would become self-aware and potentially overthrow mankind as the dominant race (a la Terminator or others). We're not there yet, but I think Butler would have a coronary if he saw how today's technology compared of that ~120 years ago. While the discussion on consciousness has some holes, it's also intriguing, especially when looking at the advancements of the last hundred years. He makes some good arguments and it's interesting to transition those arguments into the natural world and look at the advancements of mankind as a race or of other animals out there. The rise of consciousness or self-awareness is a very interesting topic. I'd be interested to read more of his thoughts since in the book he basically opens the can of worms and sets it on a shelf.So in terms of the satire, Butler brings forth some interesting ideas.In terms of the plot, it's a fairly basic adventure novel of the nineteenth century...a man in a distant British colony seeks fame and fortune through exploration and hopefully finding either a place to gain more wealth or to find savages to convert to Christianity or both. The first 50-100 pages contain standard Victorian descriptions of the landscapes and the travels. While poetic and pretty, they did drag on and I wanted to skip beyond them. As our narrator finally gets closer to Erewhon, his travels actually have some drama unfold. Once he finally arrives at the city, he's initially thrown into prison and has some moderate adventure.The "adventures" he has in the country of Erewhon are very lightweight in terms of adventure. The level of excitement is pretty bland since it is often broken up by dozens of pages of satirical essay exploring strange elements of Erewhonian culture. Again, this is moderately typical of 19th century literature, but I was hoping for a bit more in terms of action within Erewhon itself. The "story" of the book could probably take ~1/3 of the pages (with probably a third of those devoted to description of the countryside and his initial travels) with the remaining 2/3 being devoted to thoughtful discourse on the various absurdities of society.All in all, this was an interesting and thought provoking book...but I would've preferred the abridged version and/or simply reading the "essays" as essays rather than having them interjected into an adventure novel.***2 1/2 stars