Mirror up to Nature, The: Reflections of Victorianism in Samuel Butler's Erewhon

Remington, Thomas J. "'The Mirror up to Nature': Reflections of Victorianism in Samuel Butler's Erewhon." No Place Else, q.v. this Category.

Butler's correspondence with Charles Darwin and the full text of Erewhon make clear "that the true satirical target of 'The Book of the Machines' was Bishop Joseph Butler's . . . Analogy of Religion . . . to the Constitution and Course of Nature" (37), plus other dogmatic works by overly consistent Victorians; the satire was neither a Victorian attack on Darwinism nor early S. F. on the theme of machine takeover.