Thirty years have passed since Mr. Higgs first stumbled upon that odd and baffling land: Erewhon.

Finding himself in possession of a small fortune, and lonely after the death of his wife, he sets out again for that kingdom in the mountains -- to discover great changes have occurred there -- in the clothing, in the written culture, and above all in the religious fervor besetting the people . . . the dread secret of which sends him back to England, nearly paralyzed by insanity

Samuel Butler waited nearly three decades after his 1872 masterpiece Erewhon to publish its fully worthy sequel.