Note 369 — XXIV The Life of the World to Come

Butler made this note in 1899 before the publication of Shakespeare’s Sonnets Reconsidered, which was published in the same year. The Odyssey Rendered info English Prose appeared in 1900 and Erewhon Revisited, the last book published in his lifetime, in 1901. He made no analysis of the sales of these three books, nor of the sales of A First Year in Canterbury Settlement published in 1863, nor of his pamphlet The Evidence for the Resurrection, published in 1865. The Way of all Flesh and Essays on Life, Art, and Science were not published till after his death. I do not know what he means by A Book of Essays, unless it may be that he incurred an outlay of £3 11s. 9d. in connection with a projected republication of his articles in the Universal Review or of some of his Italian articles about the Odyssey.