Samuel Butler

Samuel Butler was born 4 December 1835 into the England that expected him to believe and obey. He broke instead: published Erewhon in 1872, a satirical utopian novel that flipped his era's logic inside out, and it stuck. Then he wrote The Way of All Flesh, a semi-autobiographical dismantling of Victorian family life so raw he wouldn't let it see print in his lifetime - it appeared in 1903, after his death on 18 June 1902, heavily revised, and wasn't published in original form until 1964. Both have stayed in print ever since. Between novels he took on Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, Italian art, and rendered the Iliad and Odyssey into prose translations scholars still crack open. He spent a life poking at the things people preferred not to question, and made sure the most dangerous poke waited until he couldn't be hurt by it.