'Erewhon; Or, Over the Range' by Samuel Butler: A Scholarly Edition
View / Open Files
Authors
Plumridge, Rose Anna
Advisors
Abbott, Ruth
Date
2021-09-01Awarding Institution
University of Cambridge
Qualification
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Type
Thesis
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Plumridge, R. A. (2021). 'Erewhon; Or, Over the Range' by Samuel Butler: A Scholarly Edition (Doctoral thesis). https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.82721
Abstract
This thesis comprises a scholarly edition of Samuel Butler’s satirical novel 'Erewhon; or, Over the Range' (1872). All prior editions and reprints of 'Erewhon' have positioned it squarely within the traditions of Menippean satire and British intellectual culture; this edition situates 'Erewhon' in its colonial context for the first time, stressing its debt to Butler’s movement
between the centre and margin of Britain’s expanding empire. The General Introduction argues that Erewhon is a product of two experiences of Butler’s early life: his education at Cambridge University from 1854–1858 and his sojourn in the Canterbury colony in New Zealand, as a pastoralist, from 1859–1864. Taking Butler’s mistrust of logical reasoning as the central example, I examine how the conditions of colonial life provided a dynamic challenge to the intellectual framework of Butler’s elite, localised liberal education. The Editorial Introduction carries an ancillary argument in favour of the first edition as copy-text. No previous edition of Erewhon has reproduced this text. Tracing the novel’s complex compositional and publication history in relation to D. F. McKenzie’s sociology of texts, I argue that the first edition is moulded by Butler’s experiences at the imperial centre and periphery of empire, while subsequent editions are shaped by his later theories of art and evolution forged in England and Italy. My privileging of the first edition, and the manuscript from which it was forged, is reflected in the content and organisation of the scholarly
apparatus, as explained in the Editorial Methods section. The apparatus includes a collation of variants between Butler’s manuscript and the first edition; notes about the manuscript; collated variants from all print editions; and a comprehensive critical commentary designed to support a variety of scholarly interests, but also grounding the novel in the reciprocal flow of ideas between Cambridge and Canterbury in the mid-nineteenth century.
Keywords
Samuel Butler, Edition, British Empire, Sociology of texts, New Zealand
Embargo Lift Date
2023-03-22
Identifiers
This record's DOI: https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.82721
Statistics
Total file downloads (since January 2020). For more information on metrics see the
IRUS guide.
Recommended or similar items
The current recommendation prototype on the Apollo Repository will be turned off on 03 February 2023. Although the pilot has been fruitful for both parties, the service provider IKVA is focusing on horizon scanning products and so the recommender service can no longer be supported. We recognise the importance of recommender services in supporting research discovery and are evaluating offerings from other service providers. If you would like to offer feedback on this decision please contact us on: support@repository.cam.ac.uk