bio notes:
born: 12/4/1835
died: 6/18/1902
born as: Samuel Butler

English novelist, essayist, and critic whose satire Erewhon (1872) foreshadowed the collapse of the VIctorian illusion of eternal progress. The Way of All Flesh (1903), his autobiographical novel, is generally considered his masterpiece. - Merriam-Webster's Encyclopedia of Literature