ABSTRACT
From the publication of Ex Voto in 1888 until his death in 1902, Samuel Butler was occupied with three major projects — a biography, classical scholarship, and the editing of his unpublished letters and notebooks — all of which would result in multi-volume works. He also completed two shorter works, Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered and Erewhon Revisited. The first major project was the Life and Letters of his grandfather, Dr Samuel Butler. The second major project was Butler's re-engagement with Homer's Iliad and Odyssey. Early in 1888, Butler was asked by the Shrewsbury Archaeological Society to write a memoir of his grandfather, who had been headmaster of Shrewsbury School from 1798 to 1836. Butler started writing the memoir of his grandfather in 1889, but it soon lengthened into a two-volume Life and Letters, which was published by John Murray in 1896, albeit at Butler's expense, seven years before the less-than-flattering Way of All Flesh.
