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This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

Product Description
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

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Canadian cultural icon Stephen Leacock was as wise and witty as he was prolific, and as sharp as he was humane. A professor of political economy, author, and social critic, Leacock has long been considered Canada's foremost humourist and social satirist.He was at his best in observational humour but excelled as well in the unforgettable aphorism and the pointed riposte.Leacock's views on life provide a uniquely Canadian take on the world, an ironic perspective which continues to delight and instruct readers around the globe.

Introduced and compiled by scholar and writer Gerald Lynch, with material gleaned from the approximately sixty books of fiction and non-fiction Leacock published, Leacock on Life is an anthology of Leacock's wit and wisdom, beginning with his memorable preface to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town and ending with his bitter-sweet essay, 'Three Score and Ten.'With selections classified under forty-five headings and a reference key sourcing all quotations, this collection makes widely available Leacock's views on such subjects as: Canadian politics, love, education, economics, humour, technology, business, America, and writing, among many others.Leacock had opinions on every subject, and they are as humorous, provocative, and relevant today as when first articulated.

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This new book is a pictorial treasure, tracing the life of Canada's first and foremost man of letters, a legendary teacher and a world-renowned humorist. More than two hundred photographs are reproduced, drawn from the archives of the Stephen Leacock Museum, housed in the Leacock estate, "The Old Brewery Bay" in Orillia. Most are published for the first time. In this exclusive collection, we follow Stephen Leacock from a Lake Simcoe farm to Upper Canada College, to McGill University, and global acclaim that followed the publication of his first books of humour before World War I. Many are intimate family portraits; many are set at The Old Brewery Bay, the "farm" he established in 1908 on the shores of Lake Couchiching, where the greats of American and Canadian literary and academic life gathered and celebrated over the next thirty-five years. ... Read more

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Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) is one of Canada's most respected and beloved writers. A prolific author of prodigious talent, he had an international following during his career. Although he was best known as a humorist, he was also a professor of political economy, an historian, a social critic and propagandist, a writer of doggerel, and a platform entertainer. A Bibliography of Stephen Leacock employs the protocols of descriptive bibliography to record all of Leacock's published work from his first known venture into print in 1887 until the cut-off date of 1998.

One of the bibliography's major strengths is an emphasis on publishing history. Organized into 10 sections, the bibliography describes all editions and issues; Leacock's contributions to books; his serial publications (in newspapers and magazines); reports of his speeches and lectures; lectures given; interviews; authorized adaptations; translations; recordings by Leacock; Braille, talking books and films; encyclopedia articles; and contributions in serial articles and books by others. In addition, there is a section for "Lost Leads," see-references, and a comprehensive index (author, title, and subject). A Bibliography of Stephen Leacock reveals the complexity and scope of Leacock's enormous canon. Based on an in-depth examination of texts and archival documents, this bibliography is a research tool in ... Read more

Product Description
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (9)

It made me homesick for a little town that never existed.
Leacock wrote in the introduction that Mariposa represented seventy or eighty different towns throughout Canada. The residents were composite characters of people he knew. Leacock did a great job of making the town seem alive. I wished I were there for the picnics, the cruises on the lake and the poker games. The plots of vignettes were good. The writing was too cute sometimes. His classical references were over my public school education at times. The characters were drawn fairly well. What the author did very well was the throw away descriptions of the characters. He would almost insult the characters he was describing in such endearing terms that I immediately felt drawn to the character.

Leacock was amazing talent. The book wasn't deep, but it was a fun, enjoyable ride down memory lane.

very nice book
Nice book. But in this edition, there is no chapter title on each page, so it's a littledifficult to track the chapters.

funniest book i've ever read
no hype. i couldn't stop laughing as i was reading this. and i mean laughing out loud. in a cafe. with everyone staring at me. but i didn't care. and i couldn't help it if i did. it's just too hilarious.

It Soothes the Soul
There is at least one author who may remind you of Stephen Leacock, namely Garrison Keillor of Lake Wobegon fame, but Leacock should be recognized as the ultimate master of quaint, bucolic humor. Leacock, who died in 1944, became arguably the most prominent Canadian humorist of his day (and probably of all time). What is ironic about that claim is that Leacock worked for most of his life as a professor of economics. We do not usually equate economics with humor, preferring to think of that profession as one of bow ties and supply and demand charts. Throw that presumption out the window and pick up a copy of "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town," Leacock's best known work available through the New Canadian Library series.

For me, one of the funniest sections of the book was the introduction written by Leacock, where he gives you some background about himself and his profession. This short piece of writing quickly gives you an idea of the type of humor you will find in the actual sketches: a very sly, very quiet and clever type of humor that often takes a while to sink in. Leacock does not rely on rim shot jokes or manic posturing in his writings. Instead, he creates the fictional Canadian town of Mariposa and populates it with small town archetypes that are wonders to behold.

All of the characters are hilarious in their own way: Mr. Smith, the proprietor of the local hotel and bar, full of schemes to earn money while trying to get his liquor license back. Then there is Jefferson Thorpe, the barber involved in financial schemes that may put him on the level of the Morgans and the Rockefellers. The Reverend Mr. Drone presides over the local Church of England in Mariposa, a man who reads Greek as easy as can be but laments his lack of knowledge about logarithms and balancing the financial books of the church. Peter Pupkin, the teller at the local bank, has a secret he wants no one to know about, but which eventually comes out while he is courting the daughter of the town judge. All of these characters, and several others, interact throughout the sketches.

Leacock has the ability to turn a story, to make it take a crazy, unexpected twist even when you are looking for such a maneuver. That he accomplishes this in stories that rarely run longer than twenty pages is certainly a sign of great talent. By the time you reach the end of the book, you know these people as though you lived in the town yourself, and you know what makes them tick.

Despite all of the crazy antics in Mariposa, Leacock never lets the reader lose sight of the fact that these are basically good people living good lives. There seems to be a lot of feeling for the citizens of Mariposa on the part of Leacock, which comes to a head in the final sketch in the collection, "L'Envoi. The Train to Mariposa," where he recounts traveling back to the town after being away for years, with all of the attendant emotions that brings as recognizable landmarks come into view and the traveler realizes that his little town is the same as when he left it years before.

I suspect there is a historical importance to "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town." These writings first appeared in 1912, a time when many people living in the bigger Canadian cities still remembered life in a small town. In addition to the humorous aspects of the book, the author includes many descriptive passages concerning the atmosphere and layout of Mariposa, something instantly recognizable to anyone who grew up in such a place. Nostalgia for the simpler life of the small town probably played a significant role in the book's success.

I look forward to reading more Stephen Leacock. While much of the humor in the book is not belly laugh funny, it does provide one with a deep satisfaction of reading clever humor from an author who knows how to tickle the funny bone. You do not need to be Canadian to enjoy this wonderful book.

the funniest book i've ever read
Like the heading says, this is the funniest book I've ever read.Leacock was a comic genius and this is his best work.Buy it, read it, love it. ... Read more

Product Description
This reproduction was printed from a digital file created at the Library of Congress as part of an extensive scanning effort started with a generous donation from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.The Library is pleased to offer much of its public domain holdings free of charge online and at a modest price in this printed format.Seeing these older volumes from our collections rediscovered by new generations of readers renews our own passion for books and scholarship. ... Read more

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Stephen Leacock (1869-1944), perhaps best known and remembered for his delightful book Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, remains one of the best-loved humorists in the English language.

Leacock lived through half of Queen Victoria's reign and half the twentieth century, embracing a world of unsettling change. He wore many hats: teacher, academic, author, economist, public speaker, social leader, and family man. Stephen Leacock: His Remarkable Life is the a comprehensive and thoroughly researched recreation of his remarkable life; it will help form the background for appreciating the source of Leacock's humor and its significance in his own life and times. Newspaper accounts, private letters, diaries and memoirs are brought together with his published humor which illustrated Leacock's amazing creative process and the impact he had as a writer, teacher and thinker. ... Read more

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A personal account of the misadventures that preceded the opening of the Leacock home to the public in 1958. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A superb story about the rescue of a Canadian hero
Canada is a land without heroes but with some very remarkable citizens, as this book about saving the summer home of Canada's most distinguished humourist makes abundantly clear.

One of those remarkable citizens is Pete McGarvey, who came to Orillia in 1947 as a 19-year-old high school graduate to work at a just established and definitely struggling tiny radio station located in cramped quarters above Loblaw's little grocery store.Ten years later McGarvey was honoured as Orillia's "Citizen of the Year" for his success in saving the Stephen Leacock Home and helping make it the town's most enduring and famous attraction.

It's a book written in the kindly spirit of Leacock, who in 1912 portrayed many of the leading citizens of Orillia in 'Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town'.It's Canada's version of the hit musical "Carousel" without the dark elements.Not everyone in town was amused in 1912, or by the time McGarvey arrived on the scene;he and a dedicated few had a long uphill task to persuade town officials to recognize the national stature within their midst.

By the mid-1950s, the Leacock home was abandoned and open to every hobo who wanted a free place to stay.In the winters, as a teenager then, I remember walking across the ice on Lake Couchiching to it and going in to get out of the cold.Leacock's personal library was still there;the hobos didn't consider books worth stealing, and even as a teen I thought i was on sacred ground.

It's not that Leacock was forgotten.Every year, math teacher R. B. Laing read Leacock's witty story about A, B and C to introduce his Grade 10 class to algebra.But most of the snooty set regarded 'Sunshine Sketches' as the ramblings of a local drunk who made fun of the town's most honorable, upright and proper citizens.It's little wonder McGarvey and a dedicated few local citizens had an almost impossible task to rescue and preserve Leacock's home.

Granted, I knew about half the people cited in this book.I used to babysit McGarvey's children.I listened to him every day on the radio, worked at CFOR when I was in high school (which by then was right across the street), and he offered me a permanent job which I turned down to work at the local newspaper.McGarvey was legendary;when it came to writing news stories or taking news over the phone, he was the fastest two-finger typist in Canada.My goal was to be a writer, not a broadcaster (but I am a two-finger typist).

McGarvey's career included being one of the best broadcasters in Orillia, and later Toronto, and a superb writer as this book shows, plus the guiding spirit in persuading Orillia to preserve a memorial to one of Canada's earliest humourists.This book tells a story I grew up with, and fills it in with a wealth of the background efforts needed to make it come true.

It is a testimonial to two Canadian heroes--Leacock, and McGarvey who kept the legend of Leacock alive in the town he made world famous.Surely, someday, McGarvey--and C. H. Hale, who launched the effort shortly after Leacock died in 1944--deserve biographies of their own.

Is this likely?Hardly.Canada usually doesn't honour its heroes.But, in this instance, a Canadian hero got due recognition.This is a superb story of how it happened.



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