When the traveller Higgs discovers the remote land of Erewhon, he finds himself amongst a strange race who have forbidden the use of machines, who suppress originality and uphold the study of unreason and hypothetics. As fresh and original today as when it was first published in 1872, Erewhon, inspired by Darwin's The Origin of Species, is Samuel Butler's brilliant satirical response to religious and social orthodoxy. |A classic of utopian fiction, first published in 1872 as a satirical response to Darwin's Origin of Species. |Samuel Butler (1835-1902) was the son of a clergyman. Following a disagreement with his father, he left England to beome a sheep farmer in New Zealand, returning to England in 1864. He published Erewhon anonymously in 1872, and went on to publish several works attacking contemporary scientific ideas, in particular Darwin's theory of natural selection.