Satire
Niels Klim's Journey under the Ground
Niels Klim's Underground Travels, originally published in Latin as "Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum" (1741) is a satirical scienc…
The Misses Mallett
The arrival of the eligible Francis Sales disturbs the calm existence of the four Misses Mallett in this social satire. Three women love him…
The History of the Life of the Late Mr. Jonathan Wild the Great
This novel is sometimes thought of as [Fielding's] first because he almost certainly began composing it before he wrote Shamela and Joseph A…
The Death of the Lion
This short novel is a black comedy about fame, manipulation, pretension, and surviving it all. The narrator, a reprehensible and seedy journ…
God's fool
At the age of nine, Elias Lossell becomes deaf and blind from an accident. Communication with him becomes difficult, and mentally, he never …
The School for Wives
In 1661 and 1662 Moliere presented the plays The School for Husbands and then The School for Wives (this one). "The central situations …
Orlando, A Biography
Virginia Woolf's groundbreaking satire of British culture, customs, literature, philosophy, and politics from the Elizabethan era to the aut…
A Deal With The Devil
A Deal with the Devil is a classic tale with a humorous twist. We find that on the night preceeding his 100th birthday Grandpapa, a cantanke…
In Brief Authority
Satiric comedy from 1915 about a nouveau riche British family and their nanny who get whisked off to Maerchenland ('the land of Fairy Tales'…
The Westminster Alice
Published five years before John Kendrick Bangs had the same idea with Alice in Blunderland, Saki, in his 1902 series of satirical articles,…
A Journey from This World to the Next
A Journey from This World to the Next invites listeners to explore the afterlife through the eyes of a narrator who meets his end in the ver…
Lucian's Dialogues
Dialogues of the Dead are 30 miniature dialogues mocking the Homeric conception of the Greek gods, originally written in Attic Greek by Syri…
Rameau's Nephew
Rameau's Nephew is a thought-provoking philosophical dialogue by Denis Diderot that delves into the complexities of human nature and society…
Penguin Island
The novel (original French title -- L'Île des Pingouins) is a satire on human nature. The first publication was in 1908. These penguin…
The Wit and Humor of America
The Wit and Humor of America is a delightful collection that showcases the rich tapestry of American wit and humor through a selection of sh…
Satires
Decimus Iunius Iuvenalis, known in English as Juvenal, was a Roman poet active in the late 1st and early 2nd century AD. The details of the …
The Revolt of the Angels
Anatole France, in his satirical and allegorical fashion, weaves a tale of fantasy which finds a mischievous guardian angel stealing books f…
The Importance of Being Earnest
In this most popular of all Oscar Wilde’s plays, two fashionable bachelors, Jack Worthing and Algernon Moncrieff, discover that each has bee…
The Miser
The Miser is a comedy of manners about a rich moneylender named Harpagon. His feisty children long to escape from his penny-pinching househo…
Bill Nye's Cordwood
From Galileo to Grover Cleveland, from wasps to cattle, from dinosaurs to the railroad, Bill Nye's wide ranging wit pokes gentle fun at ever…