Stephen Leacock

Ill.: A. H. Fish

Precedente humorístico de los territorios ficticios de la novela contemporánea, el pueblo de Mariposa es el centro del mundo, o al menos eso creen sus vecinos. Un lugar idílico, a la orilla de uno de los Grandes Lagos, en el que nada sucede que pase desapercibido, nada que pueda alterar el carácter recio y sin doblez de sus habitantes y romper la apacible bondad con que se relacionan. ¿Nada?

El más grande humorista canadiense de todos los tiempos husmea en la vida de los ricachones. El relato del día a día en la zona residencial de una ciudad de segunda de Estados Unidos, a principios del siglo XX: un remanso de paz, aislado de la vulgaridad de los barrios bajos, en el que todos los lobos pasean vulgares y altivos, vulnerables y temibles bajo sus mejores pieles de cordero. Una vision que airea las verguenzas de los que se apoltronan en lo alto del escalafon social.

This book is sent you by the Board of Trade of the town of Orillia, Ontario, Canada in the hope that it may help to draw attention to the opportunities for investment of British capital in the industries of Canada.In "Economic Prosperity in the British Empire" Professor Stephen Leacock discusses the historical causes of its original fiscal disintegration, when Canada and Australia, though politically independent were in fact economically independent through the necessity of raising their own state revenue and the operation of the Free Trade School in England under Peel and Russell.

Como toda buena utopía, este libro empieza con un protago-nista que despierta de un sueño de cien años en un mun-do muy distinto del que recuerda. Pero este mundo del futuro tampoco se parece a las descripciones de Platon, Thomas More o Francis Bacon: aparentemente ideal, la sociedad del porvenir se presenta tan desquiciada como risible. El resultado es una concatenacion de equivocos y confusiones, rebosante de una feroz ironia contra las instituciones, los politicos obtusos y la masa manipulable. Stephen Butler Leacock, maestro de la literatura de humor, sati-riza el genero literario de las utopias con una novela repleta de historias comicas al borde de las lagrimas, pero al mismo tiempo filosoficas al borde de la perplejidad.

Stephen Leacock sees the comic of social situations. His writing exposes the incongruity between appearance and reality in human conduct, and his work is characterized by the invention of lively comic situations.Through this seven specially selected short stories you can meet and have fun with this author:- My Financial Career- Merry Christmas- How to Make a Million Dollars- How to Live to be 200- How to Avoid Getting Married- Aristocratic Education- Self-Made Men

Stephen Leacock is an unjustly neglected master of the short-story genre, once considered the best-known humorist in the world. Although he was a prolific writer, producing about fifty novels, biographies and histories, he was best known for his humorous articles and short stories in magazines.One of his later collections, Frenzied Fiction shows a master of a genre at the height of his game, and contains all the hallmarks of his earlier work and the trademark wit which he had refined over the previous decades. By turns laugh-aloud hilarious and poignant, and containing such gems as My Recollections as a Spy and Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life, this collection builds a strong case against prohibition, paints a moving picture of a war-torn world, caricatures and lampoons novelists, actors and princes, and demonstrates why he met with such success and stacked a fan base with figures as varied as John Lane, A.P. Herbert and Groucho Marx.

A collection of wry looks at literature, education, and other social phenomena by Canadian humourist and economics professor, Stephen Leacock.