Barnes & Noble Digital Library

The Way of All Flesh (1903) mercilessly exposed Victorian hypocrisies of religion and social life. The novel built up a large following for its unsparing and often bitterly comic depiction of generations of the deluded Pontifex family. Contemporary readers can appreciate the story of Ernest Pontifex''s fitful and troubled journey into intellectual and social independence, even as lip service to the same Victorian pieties has not yet disappeared.