Novel
Erewhon
Samuel Butler · 1872
Opening lines
If the reader will excuse me, I will say nothing of my antecedents, nor of the circumstances which led me to leave my native country; the narrative would be tedious to him and painful to myself.
Text quoted from gutenberg.org
Synopsis
A young Englishman of twenty-two, employed on a sheep farm in a distant colony, dreams of the unknown lands behind the great mountain range. His guide abandons him along the way; he crosses the pass alone. On the other side, a people of great beauty stops him, confiscates his watch and leads him before broken machines displayed in a museum. In prison, he learns the language, then, lodged with a wealthy merchant, discovers that the sick are tried there like criminals and that swindlers are treated there like the sick.
Context
The three chapters on the machines come from a letter signed Cellarius, published on 13 June 1863 in The Press, a Christchurch newspaper, and written in the upper Rangitata valley where its author raised sheep; he took it up again and expanded it in 1865 for a London review, then a third time for the book. The first chapters come from the same valley. The book appeared without an author's name in March 1872, and the author made himself known two months later. In the preface to the second edition, he regretted that these chapters had been taken for a mockery of Darwin's theory.
Who it is for
A satirical novel of medium length; the chapter on machines, known as the book of the machines, has been published separately in French since 2013.
Prizes and reception
The first edition sold out in three weeks, and the book is one of the first texts to envisage the autonomous evolution of machines.
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