Humour and Satire
Showing 1–24 of 30 resultsSorted by latest
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The Country Wife
The notorious rake Harry Horner pretends to have succumbed to a venereal disease and thus become impotent in order to be allowed to spend time…
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Fanny Fern: Selected Writings
Fanny Fern dominated the New York literary scene in the 1850s, garnering both esteem and, occasionally, derision for her witty and acerbic newspaper columns and…
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The Broadview Anthology of British Satire, 1660-1750
The Broadview Anthology of British Satire, 1660–1750 provides instructors and students with a thorough introduction to the highpoint of British literary satire. Reflecting current pedagogical…
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Castle Rackrent
Castle Rackrent—Maria Edgeworth’s first novel, and the work for which she was and is best known—occupies a most unusual place in the history both of…
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Pudd’nhead Wilson and Those Extraordinary Twins
The two narratives published together in The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson and the Comedy Those Extraordinary Twins are overflowing with spectacular events. Twain shows us…
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Domestic Manners of the Americans
Frances Trollope’s Domestic Manners of the Americans, complemented by Auguste Hervieu’s satiric illustrations, took the transatlantic world by storm in 1832. An unusual combination of…
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The Winter’s Tale
Neither comedy nor tragedy, The Winter’s Tale contains elements of each genre, and defies easy classification. It experiments, like many of Shakespeare’s late plays, with…
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The Clockmaker
The serial publication of The Clockmaker in 1835-36 launched Canadian judge Thomas Chandler Haliburton to literary fame. A broad satire with a garrulous, deceitful American…
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The Tragedy of Tragedies
Best known today for the novels Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, Henry Fielding was just as renowned in his own time as a prolific and…
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The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe
The Rivals and Polly Honeycombe revolve around young women who wish the world would conform to novelistic convention. Unlike most eighteenth-century heroines keen on novel…
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As You Like It
Both a witty satire of literary cliché and a tender meditation on the varieties of love, As You Like It continues to be one of…
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Gulliver’s Travels
In this narrative of the gullible ship’s doctor Lemuel Gulliver and his extraordinary travels, Jonathan Swift takes readers through a series of apparently child-like fantasy…
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Flatland
Flatland (1884) is an influential mathematical fantasy that simultaneously provides an introduction to non-Euclidean geometry and a satire on the Victorian class structure, issues of…
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The Importance of Being Earnest
The Importance of Being Earnest marks a central moment in late-Victorian literature, not only for its wit but also for its role in the shift…
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Candide
The philosophical problem of evil—that a supposedly good God could allow terrible human suffering—troubled the minds of eighteenth-century thinkers as it troubles us today. Voltaire’s…
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The Diary of a Nobody
The Diary of a Nobody, the spoof diary of Charles Pooter, a London clerk, first appeared as a book in 1892 and has never been…
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Nightmare Abbey
This 1818 novel is set in a former abbey whose owner, Christopher Glowry, is host to visitors who enjoy his hospitality and engage in endless…
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The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
This classic novel of childhood is set in fictional St. Petersburg, a town based on Mark Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri. Twain’s recounting of Tom…
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The Imperialist
Set in the fictional Ontario town of Elgin at the beginning of the twentieth century, this 1904 novel was in its own time addressed largely…
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The Infernal Quixote
The Infernal Quixote (1801) is an enjoyable comic romp in which Charles Lucas engages directly with the most pressing political issues of his day and…
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Anti-Pamela and Shamela
Published together for the first time, Eliza Haywood’s Anti-Pamela and Henry Fielding’s An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews are the two most…
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An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting
Perhaps the first extended non-fiction prose satire written by an English woman, Jane Collier’s An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting (1753) is a…
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Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town
Set in the fictional landscape of Mariposa on the shores of Lake Wissanotti in Missinaba County, Leacock’s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is an…
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Northanger Abbey – Second Edition
First accepted by a publisher in 1803, Northanger Abbey was eventually published posthumously in 1818. In it Austen weaves a romance full of suspense and…