Samuel Butler was an English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel Erewhon (1872) and the semi-autobiographical novel The Way of All Flesh. Both novels have remained in print since their initial publication. In other studies he examined Christian orthodoxy, evolutionary thought, and Italian art, and made prose translations of the Iliad and Odyssey that are still consulted.

Samuel Butler was an English classical scholar and schoolmaster of Shrewsbury School, and Bishop of Lichfield. His grandson was Samuel Butler, the author of the novel Erewhon.