Satire
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…
Life and Adventures of Martin Chuzzlewit
Old Martin Chuzzlewit has heaps of money that has never brought him anything but misery. Estranged from his grandson and namesake, when word…
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 …
The Proposal
The Proposal is a one act comic farce by Anton Chekhov. In Chekhov's Russia, marriage was a means of economic stability for most people. The…
The Relentless City
A satiric novel of manners written in Benson's classic style of gently poking fun at class structures and the people who fill them. This tim…
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…
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…
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…
A Cynic Looks At Life
A Cynic Looks At Life is a sharp and insightful collection of essays by Ambrose Bierce, renowned for his acerbic wit and keen observations. …
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…
Hard Times
Charles Dickens' 1854 novel opens with the philosophy of education espoused by the eminently practical Mr. Gradgrind, who prizes "facts…
The Paying Guest
Clarence and Emmeline Mumford are in for a real treat when they take in the young, outspoken Miss Louise Derrick as their guest. Shedding a …
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…
Love and Mr Lewisham
Love and Mr Lewisham is a witty exploration of the complexities of love, ambition, and societal expectations in late 19th century England. H…
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…
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…
Crome Yellow
Fascinating and brilliant at many levels, Huxley's spoof of Lady Ottoline Morrell's famous bohemian gatherings is difficult to categorize. T…
The Marriage of Heaven and Hell
The work was composed between 1790 and 1793, in the period of radical foment and political conflict immediately after the French Revolution.…
Zuleika Dobson
A wickedly funny 1911 satire on undergraduate life in Edwardian Oxford' in which the entire student body of Oxford university including the …
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…