Ernest Pontifex, or The Way of All Flesh

Description

Samuel Butler worked on Ernest Pontifex, or The Way of All Flesh over eleven years, leaving a manuscript after his death in 1902 that required extensive editing by R.A. Streatfeild, creating the only ever published edition until this one in 1964, edited from the original manuscript by Daniel F. Howard. Written with great humour, irony and honesty, The Way of All Flesh exploded perceptions of the Victorian middle-class family in its radical depiction of Ernest Pontifex, a young man who casts off his background to try and discover his true self. The awkward but likeable son of a tyrannical clergyman and a priggish mother, and destined to follow his father into the church, Ernest gleefully rejects his parents’ respectability, and chooses instead to find his own way in the world. This is the 1966 edition in very good condition.