Satire
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…
The School for Husbands
In 1661 and 1662 Moliere presented the plays The School for Husbands (this one) and then The School for Wives. "The central situations …
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,…
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
This is a satirical novel written by Edwin A. Abbott, first published in 1884. Abbott uses a two-dimensional world, with himself as the prot…
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…
A Battle of the Books
"When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for an author to dissolve the bands which have connected him with his publis…
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…
Alice in Blunderland
John Kendrick Bangs was an American author and satirist, and the creator of modern Bangasian Fantasy, the school of fantasy writing that set…
Aesop's Fables
Dating back to the 6th century BC, Aesop's Fables tell universal truths through the use of simple allegories that are easily understood. Tho…
The Battle of the Books
"The Battle of the Books" depicts a literal battle between books in the King's Library (housed in St James's Palace at the time of…
The Crocodile
Ivan Matveich, the most ordinary person you might hope to meet, is swallowed alive by a crocodile at a sideshow. Finding life inside the be…
Lesley Castle
Lesley Castle is a melodramatic epistolary novelette written by Jane Austen when she was sixteen years old. Although the novels Austen becam…
Samuel the Seeker
What would happen to you if you tried to make your way in the world believing all the clear, simple things you had ever been taught growing …
The Tysons
Another frank May Sinclair exploration of fin de siècle English love and sex, marriage and adultery, "The Tysons" is the st…
Back to Methuselah
In this late work, Shaw examines many contemporary issues under the broad rubric of evolution and then illustrates his opinions in five brie…
The Life and Death of Tom Thumb the Great
Tom Thumb, small of stature, great of heart. This play was written as a parody of the tragic heroic biography of a great man, filled with bi…
A Collection of Letters
A Collection of Letters is an epistolary short story collection written by Jane Austen when she was fourteen years old. Although the novels …
John Donne's Satires
Donne’s StyleIn John Donne’s day, a satire was such a poem as a satyr might compose. Satyrs were rough, savage creatures in Greek mythology…
Mr. Dooley in Peace and in War
In Chicago lay a street called Archey Road, which stretched through a neighborhood which was mostly Irish immigrants, among whom was Martin …
Greener Than You Think
Do remember reading a panic-mongering news story a while back about genetically engineered “Frankengrass” “escaping” from the golf course wh…