Humor Classics

Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) was an English lawyer, social philosopher, author, statesman, and Renaissance humanist. Utopia is a work of fiction and socio-political satire. He wrote Utopia, published in 1516, about an imaginary island society and its religious, social, and political customs. While imprisoned in the Tower of London in 1534, he wrote A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation. It is a fictional dialogue focusing on the comfort of God in distress, the benefits of suffering, atonement for evil acts, faintheartedness and the temptation to suicide.

Flatland, first published in 1884, is classic work of satire. The full title, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, reveals the story's most compelling characteristic, its discussion of multiple dimensions. It is this fascinating examination which has contributed to Flatland's enduring popularity.

Satire, Humor and Irony in some cases have been regarded as the most effective source to understand a society, the oldest form of social study. Contents: The Cop and the Anthem by O. Henry; The Ransom of Red Chief by O. Henry; What Stumped the Blue Jays by Mark Twain; The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain; The Toys of Peace by Saki (H. H. Munro); The Artful Hussar by Johann Peter Hebel; From The Surprising Adventures of Baron Munchausen by Rudolf Erich Raspe; The Golden Honeymoon by Ring Lardner; When I Was a Witch by Charlotte Perkins Gilman; Micromegas: A Philosophical History by Voltaire.

Despite the title, Dickens's portrayal of early industrial society is less relentlessly grim than that in novels by contemporaries such as Elizabeth Gaskell or Charles Kingsley. Hard Times weaves the tale of Thomas Gradgrind, a hard-headed politician who raises his children Louisa and Tom without love and to have no empathy, their lives completely devoid of beauty, culture, or imagination. Only after a series of crises does their father realise that the manner in which he raised his children has ruined their lives.

Chichikov, a mysterious stranger, arrives in a provincial town with a bizarre but seductive proposition for local landowners. He proposes to buy the names of their serfs who have died but who are still registered on the census, saving their owners from paying tax on them. But what collateral will Chichikov receive for these "souls"?

Born in 1623 as the youngest child of a wealthy Essex family, Margaret Cavendish became a Maid of Honour to Queen Henrietta Maria before going on to marry the widowed William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle. She was a prolific writer whose work encompassed a range of genres. The Blazing World is part fiction and part feminist text in which a lady is shipwrecked and seeks to ensure that the Blazing World in which she finds herself is transformed into a Utopia - free of war, sexual discrimination, and religious discord.

Donald Cameron, a young Scotsman, is commissioned to write a book on the outsider's view of the English. He sets about his task with enthusiasm, encountering along the way an array of richly comical characters including civil servants, newspaper editors, minor poets, a glamourous movie star, politicians, and many more. This satire of English eccentricity has become a classic of 20th century literature.

Bertie Wooster has a growing collection of sticky wickets. What with Bingo Little falling in love with every other woman he sees, two incorrigible cousins intent on rigging a betting pool of county sermons, and Aunt Agatha pressuring him to marry the woman of her choosing, Bertie feels himself perpetually knee-deep in the proverbial consommé. Thankfully, Bertie can always count on Jeeves to exert his subtle influence at precisely the right moment, saving the day with impeccable precision.

Daudet's atmospheric Letters from a Windmill, combined with Jerome K. Jerome's wonderfully idle ramblings. He was indeed the original founder of The Idler and famous for his classic novel Three Men and a Boat.

Penrod, Booth Tarkington's classic and hilarious tale of one 11-year-old boy's unceasing series of misadventures in an early 20th-century Midwestern town, has fallen into disrepute in some quarters for ethnic descriptions and dialogue that many today find offensive. Lasso Books has taken the bold step of abridging the original text and removing questionable passages and rewriting select portions so that children and adults may now read this delightful novel without the insensitivities of the past that many found objectionable.

Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, sank back in his chair looking like the good old man in a Victorian melodrama whose mortgage the villain had just foreclosed. He felt the absence of that gentle glow which customarily accompanied the departure of one of his sisters. Lord Emsworth needed Galahad....There are tricky corners to be rounded, and assorted godsons, impostors, and pretty girls to be paired off.

The story opens in the country parsonage of Dr. Primrose, a kindly man who has a good heart, a good family, and a good income. Suddenly, his idyllic life is cruelly devastated by a series of misfortunes, and he ends up in prison. Yet, despite all this calamity and injustice, the vicar never loses sight of Christian morality, a conviction which lends him genuine nobility and, in the end, also brings justice and the restoration of his family and fortune.

Candide, is a French satire written in 1759 by Voltaire, a philosopher of the Age of Enlightenment. One of the finest satires ever written, this lively tale follows the absurdly melodramatic adventures of the youthful Candide, who is forced into the army, flogged, shipwrecked, betrayed, robbed, separated from his beloved Cunégonde, and tortured by the Inquisition. As Candide witnesses calamity upon calamity, he becomes disillusioned and discovers that all is not always for the best....

"The Red Room" (Swedish: "Röda rummet") is a satire of Stockholm society, it has frequently been described as the first modern Swedish novel. While receiving mixed reviews in Sweden, it was acclaimed in Denmark, where Strindberg was hailed as a genius. As a result of "The Red Room", Strindberg became famous throughout Scandinavia. Edvard Brandes wrote that it "makes the reader want to join the fight against hypocrisy and reaction".

This story of raging comedy and despair centers on the tempestuous marriage of an heiress and a Vietnam veteran. From their "carpenter Gothic" rented house, Paul sets himself up as a media consultant for Reverend Ude, an evangelist mounting a grand crusade that conveniently suits a mining combine bidding to take over an ore strike on the site of Ude's African mission.

Age has done everything except mellow the characters in Kingsley Amis’s The Old Devils, which turns its humane and ironic gaze on a group of Welsh married couples who have been spending their golden years—when “all of a sudden the evening starts starting after breakfast”—nattering, complaining, reminiscing, and, above all, drinking. This more or less orderly social world is thrown off-kilter, however, when two old friends unexpectedly return from England: Alun Weaver, now a celebrated man of Welsh letters, and his entrancing wife, Rhiannon.

En la ciudad de Mordasoff, Marya Aleksandrovna Moskalyova, una ambiciosa mujer, intenta casar a su hija Zina, de veintitrés años con el adinerado y noble anciano Príncipe "K", quien tras haber volcado su carruaje pasa por la casa en la que ellas viven para que le asistan. Zina es considerada mayor para estar soltera y, entre las razones que explican por qué aún no se ha casado, la principal es el siniestro rumor sobre algunas extrañas relaciones que tuvo hace un año y medio con un pobre maestro de la escuela del distrito.

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions is a satirical novella by the English schoolmaster Edwin Abbott Abbott, first published in 1884 by Seeley & Co. of London. Written pseudonymously by "A Square", the book used the fictional two-dimensional world of Flatland to comment on the hierarchy of Victorian culture, but the novella's more enduring contribution is its examination of dimensions.

Volume Audiobooks presenta l'audiolibro "Fantozzi", dal libro capolavoro di Paolo Villaggio del 1971, letto e interpretato magistralmente dallo stesso autore Paolo Villaggio. Uno dei più grandi best seller italiani di sempre, che ha dato origine alla saga della maschera comica più popolare del cinema italiano, in versione aggiornata e con l'aggiunta di capitoli inediti.

In Flatland, originally published in 1884, a humble square describes his two-dimensional world to benefit the inhabitants of Spaceland, the three-dimensional realm he discovers when he is visited by a being from beyond his plane. With dry wit and wild imagination, author Edwin Abbott Abbott builds a meticulous fantasy world rooted in an astute apprehension of psychology, politics, and social structures, as well as basic geometry. The story of Flatland, at once ridiculous and profound, delivers an incisive satire of social discourse that remains remarkably relevant today.