Satire
The Struggles of Brown, Jones, and Robinson
Billed as a satire concerning the dishonest advertising and business practices of the day, it tells the tale of an upstart clothing business…
The Imaginary Invalid
The Imaginary Invalid is a sharp and humorous three-act comédie-ballet by the renowned French playwright Molière. This satiric…
The Adventures of Master F.J.
This story presents through letters, poems and third-person commentary the love affair between a young man named Freeman Jones and a married…
The Acharnians
Loaded with cryptic, nearly indecipherable inside jokes and double entendres, this early comedy of Aristophanes has a simple, anti-war premi…
Nightmare Abbey
Deep in the fens of the British coast sits the gloomy mansion that goes by the name Nightmare Abbey. It is inhabited by persons of very low …
And Even Now
This is a diverse collection of essays by English writer Max Beerbohm, whose circle included such notables as Oscar Wilde, George Bernard Sh…
The Sincere Huron
L'Ingénu is a satirical novella by the French writer Voltaire, published in 1767. It tells the story of a Huron Indian transported to…
Absalom and Achitophel
John Dryden published Absalom and Achitophel: A Poem in 1681. It is an elaborate historical allegory using the political situation faced by …
The Voyage Out
The Voyage Out is the first novel by Virginia Woolf, published in 1915 by Duckworth; and published in the U.S. in 1920 by Doran. One of Wool…
Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent.
The Letters of Jonathan Oldstyle, Gent. (1824) is a compilation of eight humorous and observational letters written by American writer, Wash…
The Misanthrope
Alceste, the misanthrope, hates everyone including himself. But unlike in many pure farces with their cliche stock characters, the character…
A Common Story
Alexander Fedoritch Adouev is the naïve, pampered son of Anna Pavlovna, a provincial landowner. He decides to go off to Saint Petersbur…
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.…
Niels Klim's Journey under the Ground
Niels Klim's Underground Travels, originally published in Latin as "Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum" (1741) is a satirical scienc…
The Confidence-Man
The Confidence-Man: His Masquerade was the last major novel by Herman Melville, the American writer and author of Moby-Dick. Published on Ap…
Arms and The Man
Arms and the Man is a comedy written by George Bernard Shaw, and was first produced in 1894 and published in 1898, and has become one of the…
Gargantua and Pantagruel
The Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel (in French, La vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel) is a connected series of five novels written in th…
Riallaro
John Macmillan Brown was born in New Zealand and a University professor, wrote under the pseudonym Godfrey Sweven. An excerpt from the Int…
An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews
An Apology for the Life of Mrs. Shamela Andrews, or simply Shamela, as it is more commonly known, is a satirical novel written by Henry Fiel…
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…