Samuel Butler

Higgs returns to Erewhon twenty years after escaping by balloon, and finds that his ascent has become a religion - Sunchildism - with temples, a priesthood, relics and a professional interest in his never coming back. Butler quarrelled with his clergyman father, made money farming sheep in New Zealand, and spent the rest of his life attacking respectable opinion; this 1901 sequel is his coldest joke about how religions are actually made.