It is not difficult to understand why The Way of All Flesh remains, year after year, one of the most avidly read works of fiction in the Modern Library. Samuel Butler's posthumous novel renews for every generation a protest against the stubborn tyrannies of parental authority and reaffirms the individual's right to freedom of thought and action. When Arnold Bennett called it "One of the greatest novels of the world," and George Bernard Shaw concurred, they gave testimony which hosts of readers since 1903 have enthusiastically corroborated.