The Project Gutenberg eBook, Erewhon, by Samuel Butler

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Title: Erewhon

Author: Samuel Butler

Release Date: March 20, 2005 [eBook #1906]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EREWHON***

Transcribed from the 1910 A. C. Fifield (revised) edition by David Price,
email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk

EREWHON, OR OVER THE RANGE

"[Greek text]"--ARIST. _Pol_.

"There is no action save upon a balance of
considerations."--_Paraphrase_.

PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

The Author wishes it to be understood that Erewhon is pronounced as a
word of three syllables, all short--thus, E-re-whon.

PREFACE TO SECOND EDITION

Having been enabled by the kindness of the public to get through an
unusually large edition of "Erewhon" in a very short time, I have taken
the opportunity of a second edition to make some necessary corrections,
and to add a few passages where it struck me that they would be
appropriately introduced; the passages are few, and it is my fixed
intention never to touch the work again.

I may perhaps be allowed to say a word or two here in reference to "The
Coming Race," to the success of which book "Erewhon" has been very
generally set down as due. This is a mistake, though a perfectly natural
one. The fact is that "Erewhon" was finished, with the exception of the
last twenty pages and a sentence or two inserted from time to time here
and there throughout the book, before the first advertisement of "The
Coming Race" appeared. A friend having called my attention to one of the
first of these advertisements, and suggesting that it probably referred
to a work of similar character to my own, I took "Erewhon" to a
well-known firm of publishers on the 1st of May 1871, and left it in
their hands for consideration. I then went abroad, and on learning that
the publishers alluded to declined the MS., I let it alone for six or
seven months, and, being in an out-of-the-way part of Italy, never saw a
single review of "The Coming Race," nor a copy of the work. On my
return, I purposely avoided looking into it until I had sent back my last
revises to