Canterbury Pieces is a classic collection of essays, newspaper articles and letters by the English novelist and critic, Samuel Butler. It includes correspondence between the author and the renowned English naturalist Charles Darwin.
The book also features the essay âDarwin among the Machinesâ (1863). In it, Samuelâs urges the destruction of all machines as he raises the pioneering idea that they will one day replace humans as the dominant species. This and the later article âLucubratio Ebriaâ (1865), became part of his widely acclaimed first novel âErewhonâ.
Butler wrote several other novels, including a sequel, âErewhon Revisitedâ and the highly acclaimed âThe Way of all Fleshâ, widely regarded as one of the greatest novels of the 20th century.
Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was a revolutionary English novelist and critic. He is best known for the utopian novel âErewhonâ (1872) and the posthumous, semi-autobiographical novel âThe Way of All Fleshâ (1903). Both of which have remained in print ever since. âErewhonâ is renowned as one of the first books to explore the idea of machine evolution. The English writer Aldous Huxley acknowledged the book's influence on his novel âBrave New Worldâ, while George Bernard Shaw deemed Butler âthe greatest English writer of the latter half of the nineteenth century.â