The Way of All Flesh

The Way of All Flesh is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler that attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 and 1884, it traces four generations of the Pontifex family.

Samuel Butleter began to write “The Way of All Flesh” about the year 1872, and was engaged upon it intermittently until 1884.  It is therefore, to a great extent, contemporaneous with “Life and Habit,” and may be taken as a practical illustration of the theory of heredity embodied in that book.  He did not work at it after 1884, but for various reasons he postponed its publication.  He was occupied in other ways, and he professed himself dissatisfied with it as a whole, and always intended to rewrite or at any rate to revise it.