Samuel Butler was a British novelist, composer, and science fiction writer born on 4 December 1835 in Langar, Nottinghamshire.

Educated at Shrewsbury School and St John's College, Butler went on to work across a striking range of fields — he was at various points a farmer, painter, photographer, philologist, and translator, in addition to his pursuits as a composer and author. His fiction included the satirical utopian novel Erewhon, published in 1872, and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh. He also produced prose translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey, work that sat alongside his broader activities as a scholar writing in English. Butler died on 18 June 1902 on St John's Wood Road in London.

Across his career, Butler returned repeatedly to several areas of inquiry: Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art each drew his sustained attention. That combination — skeptical examination of received religious and scientific ideas alongside a serious engagement with visual culture — runs through much of what he produced as a writer and scholar.