Satire
The Way of All Flesh
The Way of All Flesh (1903) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Samuel Butler which attacks Victorian-era hypocrisy. Written between 1873 an…
Goldsmith's Friend Abroad Again
This satire on the U.S.A.'s myth of being the "Home of the Oppressed, where all men are free and equal", is unrelenting in its pur…
The Gilded Age
The Gilded Age: A Tale of Today is an 1873 novel by Mark Twain and Charles Dudley Warner that satirizes greed and political corruption in po…
Flatland
Math. Geometry. Physics. Violence? Is this the same book I read in school? Yep.
One of the joys of rediscovering old books is that they…
Twilight Sleep
Wharton miraculously finds it possible to satirize the very rich while simultaneously showing compassion and even grudging admiration for so…
Still Untouched by Human Hands
Long before Douglas Adams, Robert Sheckley pioneered the sub-genre of satirical science fiction. When space operas ruled, Robert Sheckley sa…
The Idiot
The Idiot is anything but, yet his fellow boarders at Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog’s home for single gentlemen see him as such. His brand of creati…
Little Dorrit
Born in the Marshalsea Prison for Debtors, Amy—Little Dorrit—the daughter of the ruined, but self-respectful William Dorrit, has put her ent…
Hard Times
Hard Times, the shortest of Dickens's full-length novels, is set in the fictitious Victorian-England city of Coketown, where facts are the r…
Self and Self-management
Bennett's essays always provide food for thought and bring a wry smile to the lips. Human nature, it appears, changes little over the ages, …
Northanger Abbey
Northanger Abbey is a hilarious parody of 18th century gothic novels. The heroine, 17-year old Catherine, has been reading far too many “hor…
The Rape of the Lock
The Rape of the Lock is a mock-heroic narrative poem written by Alexander Pope, first published anonymously in Lintot's Miscellany in May 17…
The Island Pharisees
Richard Shelton is wrestling with his conscience. As a member of the upper class at a time when the British Empire is at its height, he sees…
The Blazing World
The Blazing World by Margaret Cavendish is, all at once, a satire, a treatise on natural philosophy, a work of proto-science fiction, and a …
Lucian's True History
One of the earliest works of science-fiction (nearly 2,000 years old). It has space travel (including war in space), lunar civilization, and…
Zuleika Dobson
A wickedly funny 1911 satire on undergraduate life in Edwardian Oxford' in which the entire student body of Oxford university including the …
The Satyricon
Satyricon (or Satyrica) is a Latin work of fiction in a mixture of prose and poetry. It is believed to have been written by Gaius Petronius,…
2 B R 0 2 B
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a prolific and genre-bending American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, su…
Yollop
Mr. Crittenden Yollop makes friends with the man who came to burglarize his home and sets out to help him return to where he really wants to…
Mrs. Warren's Profession
.Mrs. Warren's Profession is a play written by George Bernard Shaw in 1893, and first performed in London in 1902 but was banned after two p…