Samuel Butler's reputation today rests almost entirely on his three fictional works--the post-humously published novel The Way of All Flesh (1903), together with the philosophical tales Erewhon (1872) and Erewhon Revisited (1901). Though he composed a few poems, a brief portrait of the fictional author of his 1873 work The Fair Haven, and two oratorio libretti (in collaboration with his friend Henry Festing Jones), he was not essentially what today is called a creative writer, a creator of fictions. Almost seventeen of the twenty volumes comprising the Shrewsbury Edition of his collected works fall into the category of nonfiction prose; and in these works Butler reveals himself as polemicist on religious and scientific issues, as philosopher, moralist, logician, classical scholar, art historian, editor, and translator.

He was in fact a didactic writer with a strong urge to engage in controversy and criticism. He preferred to be identified in the British Museum catalogue...