Satire
A Common Story
Alexander Fedoritch Adouev is the naïve, pampered son of Anna Pavlovna, a provincial landowner. He decides to go off to Saint Petersbur…
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 …
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…
The Misanthrope
Alceste, the misanthrope, hates everyone including himself. But unlike in many pure farces with their cliche stock characters, the character…
Arms and The Man
Arms and the Man is a comedy written by George Bernard Shaw, and was first produced in 1894 and published in 1898, and has become one of the…
Lucian's Dialogues
The Dialogues of the Gods are 26 miniature dialogues mocking the Homeric conception of the Greek gods written in Attic Greek by Syrian autho…
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…
An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting
An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting was a conduct book written by Jane Collier and published in 1753. The Essay was Collier's firs…
An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews
An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, or simply Shamela, as it is more commonly known, is a satirical novel written by Henry Fiel…
The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson
Billed as a satire concerning the dishonest advertising and business practices of the day, it tells the tale of an upstart clothing business…
The Bourgeois Gentleman
The Bourgeois Gentleman of the title is a middle-class social climber, assured that by learning all the arts of a true and noble gentleman, …
Emma
Sherry reads Jane Austen’s sparkling comedy of manners with wit and vivacity, and brings the characters to life. Mr. Woodhouse worries and f…
The Glugs of Gosh
First published in 1917, The Glugs of Gosh satirizes Australian life at the start of the twentieth century - but the absurdities it catalogs…
Gargantua and Pantagruel
The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (in French, La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a connected series of five novels written in th…
Don Juan
Don Juan "contains, perhaps, more severe attacks upon hypocrisy than does even Tartuffe. It depicts the hero as a man who, rich, noble,…
The Chronicles of Clovis
The Chronicles of Clovis brings together a delightful collection of short stories by Saki, featuring the mischievous and witty Clovis Sangra…
The Wit and Humor of America
The Wit and Humor of America is a delightful collection that showcases the rich tapestry of American wit through a variety of short stories …
A Bayard from Bengal
The estimable gentleman, Chunder Bindabun Bhosh, ESQ., B.A., travels from his native India to England, with his impeccable English and manne…
Tono-Bungay
Tono-Bungay is a realist semi-autobiographical novel. It is narrated by George Ponderevo, a science student who is drafted in to help with t…
And Even Now
This is a diverse collection of essays by English writer Max Beerbohm, whose circle included such notables as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Sh…