Satire
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…
Widowers' Houses
This is one of three plays Shaw published as Plays Unpleasant in 1898; they were termed "unpleasant" because they were intended, n…
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 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…
Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences
Fenimore Cooper - author of The Deerslayer, The Last of the Mohicans, etc - has often been praised, but just as often been criticised for hi…
The Judgment of Eve
May Sinclair was a prolific author, literary critic, and feminist activist, famous in Britain and the US in the 1910’s and 20’s. The Judgmen…
The Notary's Nose
Ironic and Satirical: A successful Parisian notary, Alfred L’Ambert, is smitten with a fourteen-year-old ballet dancer. After a quarrel, his…
The Celebrity
The Celebrity is a sharp satire that explores the complexities of fame and the literary world through the lens of a young novelist's rise to…
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…
The Vegetable
"Any man who doesn’t want to get on in the world, to make a million dollars, and maybe even park his toothbrush in the White House, has…
The Imaginary Invalid
The Imaginary Invalid is a sharp and humorous three-act comédie-ballet by the renowned French playwright Molière. This satiric…
Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich
A collection of humorous fiction by renowned Canadian writer, Stephen Leacock. Unlike the lighter Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town that pr…
The Wit and Humor of America
The Wit and Humor of America is a delightful anthology that captures the essence of American wit through a collection of 55 short stories an…
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 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…
You Never Can Tell
In this witty comedy of errors, the Clandon siblings, Gloria and the twins, Dolly and Philip attempt to uncover the identity of their long l…
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 …
Lesley Castle
Lesley Castle is a melodramatic epistolary novelette written by Jane Austen when she was sixteen years old. Although the novels Austen becam…
The Shaving of Shagpat
The Shaving of Shagpat is a whimsical oriental romance that weaves together humor and allegory in a style reminiscent of the Arabian Nights.…
Evelyn; or A Heart Unmasked
Evelyn is a two-volume novel told in an epistolary style – alternating between letters from the point of view of a trusted, unmarried female…