-From the preface to the second edition.

This is another 19th century tale of a traveller discovering a radically different culture cut off from the rest of humanity, but it has more in common with Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels' than with Bulwer-Lytton's subterranean classic, 'The Coming Race'.

Erewhon depicts an isolated and unknown civilisation which exists in an inaccessible and secret location. Like Swift he uses the strangers' morals and beliefs to reveal and challenge our own.

Butler makes no effort to maintain an illusion of reality but uses the 'other world' to turn ideas upside-down and inside-out to get unique views on them.

His 'Book of the Machines' (chapters 23-25), depicting machine evolution, is perhaps more relevant today than when it was written over 140 years ago and that alone proves Erewhon as a true classic.