Satire
Knickerbocker's History of New York
Washington Irving, an author, biographer, historian, and diplomat, completed his first major work, a satire of contemporary local history an…
Gorgias
This dialogue brings Socrates face to face with the famous sophist Gorgias and his followers. It is a work likely completed around the time …
Lucia in London
In the third book in the Mapp and Lucia series, provincial snob and social climber Mrs. Emmeline Lucas, known to her friends as Lucia, and h…
Alice in Blunderland
From Alice in Blunderland: "Certain of our members claim that they have a right to sell their votes for $500 apiece--" "Mercy…
Miss Mapp
E. F. Benson's Mapp and Lucia series, consists of six novels and three short stories. The novels are: Queen Lucia, Lucia in London, Miss Map…
Self and Self-management
Bennett's essays always provide food for thought and bring a wry smile to the lips. Human nature, it appears, changes little over the ages, …
Castle Rackrent
"One of the most inspired chronicles written in English" was the verdict of William Butler Yeats on the novel Castle Rackrent by M…
The Gentle Grafter
If Jefferson "Parleyvoo" Pickens had appeared in print just a few years later, he might have been the "Gentle Grifter" i…
Little Dorrit
Born in the Marshalsea Prison for Debtors, Amy—Little Dorrit—the daughter of the ruined, but self-respectful William Dorrit, has put her ent…
The Idiot
The Idiot is anything but, yet his fellow boarders at Mrs. Smithers-Pedagog’s home for single gentlemen see him as such. His brand of creati…
Zadig or the Book of Fate
Zadig, ou La Destinée, ("Zadig, or The Book of Fate") (1747) is a famous novel written by the French Enlightenment philosop…
Mansfield Park
Mansfield Park features Austen’s frailest and perhaps most scrupulous heroine, Fannie Price. As the eldest daughter in a poor family, Fannie…
Lady Windermere's Fan
Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play About a Good Woman is a four-act comedy by Oscar Wilde, first produced 22 February 1892 at the St James's Thea…
The Unbearable Bassington
The Unbearable Bassington was the first novel written by Saki (H. H. Munro). It also contains much of the elegant wit found in his short sto…
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker
The Expedition of Humphry Clinker was the last of the picaresque novels of Tobias Smollett, and is considered by many to be his best and fun…
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…
Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern
The Library of the World's Best Literature, Ancient and Modern, is a work of enormous proportions. Setting out with the simple goal of offer…
Zuleika Dobson
A wickedly funny 1911 satire on undergraduate life in Edwardian Oxford' in which the entire student body of Oxford university including the …
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…
2 B R 0 2 B
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a prolific and genre-bending American novelist known for works blending satire, black comedy, and science fiction, su…