Erewhon, or, Over the range / by Samuel Butler.

  • Samuel Butler
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Erewhon, or, Over the range / by Samuel Butler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    19/360
    . — --—— -—--—- Preface ■j ---- ' ' ~ 1 me to attain, but in the autumn of I $yo,just as I was , beginning to get occasionally hung at Royal Academy exhibitions, my friend, the late Sir E. N. (then Mr.) Broome, suggested to me that I should add somewhat ] to the articles I had already written, and string them ) together into a book. I was rather fired by the idea, , but as I only worked at the MS. on Sundays it was ,i some months before I had completed it. I see from my second Preface that I took the book 1 to Messrs. Chapman &> Hall May I, 1871, and on j their rejection of it, under the advice of one who has attained the highest rank among living write) s, I let ; it sleep, till I took it to Mr. Trubner early in 1872. ■ As regards its rejection by Messrs. Chapman <S® Hall, i I believe their reader advised them quite wisely. They ! told me he reported that it ivas a philosophical work, ' little likely to be popular with a large circle of readers. I / hope that if I had been their reader, and the book 1 had been submitted to myself, I should have advised 1 them to the same effect. “ Erewhon appeared with the last day or two of March 1872. I attribute its unlooked-for success mainly to two early favourable reviews—the first in the Pall Mall Gazette of April 12, and the second in the Spectator of April 20. There was also another cause. 1 was complaining once to a friend that though u Ere- ivhon ” had met with such a warm reception, my subse- xm
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