author
Samuel Butler
1612–1680
Best known for the wildly inventive satire Hudibras, this 17th-century English poet turned sharp political and religious quarrels into comic verse. His writing is remembered for its wit, mock-heroic style, and fearless skewering of hypocrisy.
1 Audiobook
Hudibras, in Three Parts, Written in the Time of the Late Wars
by Samuel Butler
About the author
Born in Worcestershire in 1612 and baptized that February, Samuel Butler became one of the best-known English satirists of the 17th century. He is remembered above all for Hudibras, a long comic poem published in parts from 1663 to 1678, which made fun of fanaticism, pedantry, and the moral posturing Butler saw around him.
Before gaining literary fame, he worked in household and clerical service, experiences that gave him a close view of the kinds of personalities he later mocked so brilliantly. A committed Royalist, he wrote with a strong sense of the political and religious tensions of his age, especially those left behind by the English Civil War and Commonwealth period.
Even though fashions changed after his lifetime, Hudibras kept Butler's name alive and secured his place in English literary history. He died in London on September 25, 1680, and is still read as a master of sharp, funny, idea-driven satire.