The Way of All Flesh

Hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement,"The Way of All Fleshis regarded by some as the first 20th-century novel. Samuel Butler's autobiographical account of a harsh upbringing and troubled adulthood satirizes Victorian hypocrisy in its chronicle of the life and loves of Ernest Pontifex. Along the way, it offers a powerful indictment of 19th-century England's major institutions-the family, the church, and the class structure. Unabridged republication of the classic 1903 edition.