The work of Samuel Butler has always been considered problematic by both literary scholars and historians due to his multidisciplinary interests. Butler wrote several novels, and worked as a sheep farmer in New Zealand and then as a painter in London. He wrote books about evolution, art and classic literature, and even composed musical pieces. Therefore Butler's work has always been hard to pigeonhole into a single professional discipline.

Gillott's book provides a convincing and well-structured analysis of the work of the novelist, art historian and amateur scientist Samuel Butler in the late nineteenth-century British context, focusing in particular on his research on art and literature. The volume, which is divided into five chapters, analyses Butler's use of Lamarckism between 1860 and 1890 in his work on literary criticism and aesthetics. The book starts with an analysis of the rise of professionalization in Victorian Britain and the consequential tension between amateurs and professionals in literature, science and art. Gillott elegantly ascertains the problematic relationship between Butler and other professionals, tracing the history of Butler's life throughout the analysis of the evolution of his epistemological knowledge. Particular attention here is paid by the author to the analysis of the Darwin–Butler relationship and associated quarrel in order to show how Butler moved from believing in the professional objectivity of knowledge to considering professionals as individuals interested only in their personal careers.

The epistemological question, partially discussed in the first part of the volume, is then fully developed by Gillott throughout the subsequent analyses of Butler's theological writings. Here, the author shows how Butler moved from the rationalism of professional science to a return to faith, which Butler considered to be the ultimate basis for all possible knowledge. Of particular interest is Chapter 4, where Gillott fully presents his rethinking of Lamarckism. Instead of looking at the scientific implications of Lamarck's work Gillott offers an alternative reading which looks at the application of Lamarckism to literature and art. The backbone of the chapter is the analogy that Gillott highlights between Butler's scientific use of Lamarckism in his first monograph on evolution, Life and Habit, and his research in the history of Italian art – focusing in particular on the works of Jean Wespin, known as il Tabacchetti, and Gaudenzio Ferrari in Varallo Sesia. Gillott argues that Butler used Lamarckian aesthetics to theorize the development of the individual artist, but also the concept of art as a whole. For Gillott, the use of Lamarckian philosophy of evolution seems to be instrumental to show how, for Butler, the evolution of art is not a product of Darwinian luck but rather the consequence of Lamarckian cunning (p. 133). Gillott argues that the main consequence of Butler's Lamarckian aesthetics is that any artist improves as they age, but also that the morality of the artist is embodied in the work of art itself. The literary use of Lamarck's natural philosophy is also examined in Chapter 5, where Gillott analyses the following: Butler's Life and Letters of his grandfather Dr Samuel Butler (schoolmaster of Shrewsbury and Bishop of Lichfield), research on Homer and on the Sicilian authoress of the Odyssey, and Shakespeare's Sonnets Reconsidered. Gillott explains that the running theme of all of these publications is Butler's desire to show the harmonic nature of author and text based on a continuity of personal identity.

Overall, this book provides an interesting reading of Butler's use of Lamarckism. However, it must be noted that the volume only superficially engages with the scientific implications that Lamarck's notion of transformisme had on Victorian science. Neither does it look at similar interpretations of Lamarck's evolution in late nineteenth-century England and wider Europe. This is, of course, a partially controversial aspect for a history-of-science readership but this does not limit the value of the monograph itself.