Satire
The Follies of a Day
This is Thomas Holcroft's English translation, obtained by attending Pierre Beaumarchais' French play nine times in Paris during its origina…
A Traveller from Altruria
Set in the early 1890s, at a fashionable summer resort somewhere on the East Coast of the United States, this book tells the story of Mr. T…
The Bourgeois Gentleman
The Bourgeois Gentleman of the title is a middle-class social climber, assured that by learning all the arts of a true and noble gentleman, …
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 …
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…
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…
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…
Joan and Peter
This is satirical look at the English educational system and society in the early twentieth century and the effect of World War I on them by…
The Curtezan Unmasked
"The Curtezan unmasked or, the Whoredomes of Jezebel Painted to the Life: With Antidotes against them, or Heavenly Julips to cool Men i…
Widowers' Houses
This is one of three plays Shaw published as Plays Unpleasant in 1898; they were termed "unpleasant" because they were intended, n…
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…
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 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 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…
Lucian's Dialogues
Dialogues of the Dead are 30 miniature dialogues mocking the Homeric conception of the Greek gods, originally written in Attic Greek by Syri…
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…
An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting
An Essay on the Art of Ingeniously Tormenting was a conduct book written by Jane Collier and published in 1753. The Essay was Collier's firs…
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…
The Acharnians
Loaded with cryptic, nearly indecipherable inside jokes and double entendres, this early comedy of Aristophanes has a simple, anti-war premi…
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…