English writer Samuel Butler was BOTD in 1835. Born at Langar Rectory in Nottinghamshire, his father was an Anglican vicar, with whom he had a difficult relationship. He was educated at private schools before studying at Cambridge University, originally intending to follow his father into the Church. After graduating, he worked in poor parishes in London, where he had a crisis of faith, impulsively emigrating to New Zealand in 1859. He purchased a sheep farm near Christchurch, writing about his experiences in A First Year in Canterbury Settlement, and worked on his novel Erewhon, a Utopian narrative set in a fictional country. He formed an intimate relationship with a young German expatriate named Charles Pauli, who is widely assumed to have been his lover. Butler sold his farm, making a substantial profit, and returned to England with Pauli, taking neighbouring apartments in central London. Butler bankrolled Pauli’s studies and invested poorly in Canadian companies, eventually losing his savings. An inheritance from his father in 1839 secured his prospects, and he lived lavishly, holidaying in Italy every summer and producing books on Italian landscape and art, and translations of Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey. He spent 11 years working on his novel The Way of All Flesh, an inter-generational saga satirising Victorian morality, which remained unpublished in his lifetime. As his relationship with Pauli cooled, Butler collected other young men, including Henry Jones who became his personal assistant and travelling companion, and Hans Faesch, a Swiss student who lived in a mènage-a-trois with him and Jones. After Pauli’s death in 1892, Butler discovered that Pauli had similar arrangements with other wealthy male patrons and had amassed a small fortune, though left Butler nothing in his will. Butler died in 1902, aged 66. The Way of All Flesh was published in 1903, achieving the critical and commercial success that eluded Butler during his lifetime.