The Way of All Flesh is a semi-autobiographical novel. The narrative follows the development and tribulations of Ernest Pontifex, a weak boy starved of familial affection, who grows up to reject the tenets of his formal education and his father’s authoritarian brand of Christianity. As Ernest struggles to make his own way in the world, he learns to recognise the foibles in human nature, and at the end of the book he becomes an author of controversial literature aimed at correcting a flawed society. Although Butler wrote it between 1873 and 1884, the ferocity of his attack on the Victorian era generally and, by implication, his own parents, made Butler fearful of publishing the work while his relatives were still living. In 1903, a few months after Butler’s death, his literary executor R.A. Streatfeild arranged for the book’s publication, and it was soon acknowledged as one of the most important critiques of Victorianism of its time.