Erewhon Revisited (1901)
First edition title page (BII ERR 1901.3)
Butler’s final literary work, Erewhon Revisited, was a sequel to his first novel. The narrator of Erewhon returns to the country he discovered thirty years earlier, to find its people in the grip of a cultish religion known as 'Sunchildism', inspired by his own escape in a hot air balloon at the end of Erewhon. The sequel forms a piercing satire of Christianity in Victorian England.
Proof copy with MS corrections (BII ERR 1901.1)
Page of MS additions in the proof copy (BII ERR 1901.1)
Although this approach had proven popular in Erewhon, the intended publisher of Erewhon Revisited, Longman, expressed concerns that the work might offend the High Church, and subsequently rejected it. Butler eventually managed to have the book published by George Bernard Shaw’s publisher, Grant Richards.