Samuel Butler: A Mid-Victorian Modern [FIRST EDITION] [VINTAGE1932]

Stillman, Clara G.

Verlag: The Viking Press, New York, 1932

Beschreibung

Very good condition brown cloth boards with a gold front cover illustration and sun-faded gold spine lettering. Includes Dedication; Preface; List of Illustrations; Bibliography and Index. Illustrated with black-and-white plates and a black-and-white self-portrait plate frontispiece. An under 4 inches of the rear spine edge is with wear (see photographs). The first few blank front and rear endpapers show some foxing; the pages are otherwise in fine condition. "When Samuel Butler died in 1902 he was unknown in America, almost unknown in England, and when known, largely misunderstood and disliked. His novel, The Way of All Flesh, on which today his fame largely rests, and his Note Books had not yet been published, and his published works had either outraged or failed to impress his contemporaries. He attacked shams and propounded heresies with a zestful and fluid irony. At a time when the most enlightened were turning from orthodox religion to science as the hope of the world, Butler riddled the pretensions of both. He perceived what we are beginning to perceive today, that science could not be the spiritual hope of the world. He saw that scientific atheism and the mechanization of life were leading to an abyss of despair, a despair that no scientifically minded person then foresaw, but which is expressed by many writers today. He could not accept the banishment of mind from the universe, which he felt implied in the Darwinian view of evolution. His own life was a series of conflicts in which he had always the role of the quickening spirit opposed to the deadening letter. It was only thus that he "saved his soul alive." The dignity and power of mind were necessary to him and in his theory mind plays the active part in evolution. It is a far-reaching theory which related organically the main problems of biologic and philosophic inquiry and which underlies his thought on the most diverse subjects. It is not surprising that Butler's appeal should be so great in our day and that it was so negligible in his. His temper fits with extraordinary prevision into our own, into all that most sharply differentiates it from that of the latter half of the nineteenth century, in which he wrote. He was rebellious not with the manner and perceptions of his day, but of ours, and this distinguishes him from even the most rebellious of his contemporaries and has made him one Victorian writer whos works are increasingly read.He was alone among English writers in thoroughly transcending the current philosophic and psychological assumptions of his period.He foresaw the role of the machine with a terrifying vividness and completeness. He thought that disease was a crime and crime a disease, that education should consist largely of learning by doing, that poverty and wealth have a profound spiritual significance, that the process of growth to maturity consists largely of freeing oneself from one's parents, that the basis of all human activity is unconscious. His criticism of the natural selection hypothesis was one of the most brilliant of his day and has been reinforced by many critics since. " - short excerpt from the Foreword. Bestandsnummer des Verkäufers 004422

Bibliografische Details

Titel: Samuel Butler: A Mid-Victorian Modern [FIRST...

Verlag: The Viking Press, New York

Erscheinungsdatum: 1932

Einband: Hardcover

Zustand: Very Good

Auflage: 1st Edition