Download or read book The Oxford Book of Humorous Prose written by Frank Muir and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2002 with total page 1162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this magisterial collection, Frank Muir guides the reader on a journey of discovery and delight through five centuries of humorous prose in the English language.Starting in London with William Caxton and a Preface written and printed in 1477, and ending with P. G. Wodehouse whose last novel was published in 1977, the route is meandering: from England to Ireland and Scotland, back to England again, on to America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. There areexamples chosen from humorous fiction, letters, and journalism written by over 200 authors and ranging from medieval jests to the New Yorker and Beachcomber; from Thomas Nashe and Tom Brown's galloping bawdy to Jane Austen and on to Garrison Keillor and Arthur Marshall; from the jokes in SamuelJohnson's Dictionary to Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and his hangover. The great humorous writers such as Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and P. G. Wodehouse are given a kind of mini-anthology of their own so that the range and versatility of their work can be appreciated.The extracts are embedded in a commentary that sets the writers in their historical context with items of contemporary gossip and anecdotal biography.As tour leader of this enjoyable enterprise, there could be no one better than Frank Muir to entertain, inform, and above all amuse the reader in his own distinctive fashion.
Download or read book A Confederacy of Dunces written by John Kennedy Toole and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the Pulitzer Prize “A masterwork . . . the novel astonishes with its inventiveness . . . it is nothing less than a grand comic fugue.”—The New York Times Book Review A Confederacy of Dunces is an American comic masterpiece. John Kennedy Toole's hero, one Ignatius J. Reilly, is "huge, obese, fractious, fastidious, a latter-day Gargantua, a Don Quixote of the French Quarter. His story bursts with wholly original characters, denizens of New Orleans' lower depths, incredibly true-to-life dialogue, and the zaniest series of high and low comic adventures" (Henry Kisor, Chicago Sun-Times).
Download or read book The Oxford Book of Comic Verse written by John Gross and published by Oxford Books of Prose & Verse. This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From limericks to social satire, The Oxford Book of Comic Verse offers a remarkable collection of outstanding light poetry. John Gross has brought together the finest writers in the history of the English language - from Chaucer and Skelton to Shakespeare and Swift, Lord Byron to Robert Browning, Emily Dickinson to John Updike, as well as witty song lyrics from such artists as Irving Berlin and Cole Porter - offering delightful examples of their comic verse. Drawing on many different types of verse, including epigrams, street ballads, advertising jingles, clerihew, music-hall lyrics, and the doubledactyl of the calypso, this highly entertaining collection offers an exceptionally wide range of comic pleasures. The poems are by turns subtle, down-to-earth, macabre, ingenious, acerbic, ribald, and cheerful. Written to amuse, they call forth laughter and delight in equal measure. Compiled by one of our finest critics and anthologists, this reissue boasts a stylish new design and a fresh contemporary feel.
Download or read book It s Kind of a Funny Story written by Ned Vizzini and published by Disney Electronic Content. This book was released on 2010-09-25 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Like many ambitious New York City teenagers, Craig Gilner sees entry into Manhattan's Executive Pre-Professional High School as the ticket to his future. Determined to succeed at life—which means getting into the right high school to get into the right college to get the right job—Craig studies night and day to ace the entrance exam, and does. That's when things start to get crazy. At his new school, Craig realizes that he isn't brilliant compared to the other kids; he's just average, and maybe not even that. He soon sees his once-perfect future crumbling away.
Download or read book Fierce Pajamas written by David Remnick and published by Modern Library. This book was released on 2002-10-15 with total page 527 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Harold Ross founded The New Yorker in 1925, he called it a “comic weekly.” And although it has become much more than that, it has remained true in its irreverent heart to the founder’s description, publishing the most illustrious literary humorists in the modern era—among them Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, Groucho Marx, James Thurber, S. J. Perelman, Mike Nichols, Woody Allen, Calvin Trillin, Garrison Keillor, Ian Frazier, Roy Blount, Jr., Steve Martin, and Christopher Buckley. Fierce Pajamas is a treasury of laughter from the magazine W. H. Auden called the “best comic magazine in existence.”
Download or read book The New Oxford Book of English Prose written by John Gross and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 1064 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a unique anthology. Drawing on the full range of English prose, wherever it has been written, it illustrates the growth, development, and resources of the language from the legends of Sir Thomas Malory to the novels of Kashuo Ishiguro. In the process it reveals a variety ofachievements which no other language can match. The book represents an enormous diversity of men and women - from John Bunyan to John Updike, from Brendan Behan to Chinua Achebe, from Dorothy Wordsworth to Patrick White. As the centuries progress, American writers increase their presence, and by the twentieth century there are contributions fromIndia, Australia, Canada, Nigeria, the Caribbean and many other parts of the world. The selection is no less remarkable for its breadth in terms of subject-matter and treatment. Fiction is generously represented, but many other kinds of writing have also been drawn on: letters, diaries, and memoirs; history and philosophy; criticism and reportage; sermons and satire; travel-books;reflections on art, science, politics and sport. There are classic and well-loved passages, and also a great deal that is unfamiliar. John Gross has chosen with consummate skill to produce a volume that is both a testimonial to English prose and an endless source of pleasurable browsing.
Download or read book A Treasury of Humorous Poetry written by Frederic Lawrence Knowles and published by . This book was released on 1902 with total page 506 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Shakespeare Requirement written by Julie Schumacher and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A WASHINGTON POST NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR • The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune keep hitting beleaguered English professor Jason Fitger right between the eyes in this hilarious and eagerly awaited sequel to the cult classic of anhedonic academe, the Thurber Prize-winning Dear Committee Members. Once more into the breach... Now is the fall of his discontent, as Jason Fitger, newly appointed chair of the English Department of Payne University, takes arms against a sea of troubles, personal and institutional. His ex-wife is sleeping with the dean who must approve whatever modest initiatives he undertakes. The fearsome department secretary Fran clearly runs the show (when not taking in rescue parrots and dogs) and holds plenty of secrets she's not sharing. The lavishly funded Econ Department keeps siphoning off English's meager resources and has taken aim at its remaining office space. And Fitger's attempt to get a mossbacked and antediluvian Shakespeare scholar to retire backfires spectacularly when the press concludes that the Bard is being kicked to the curricular curb. Lord, what fools these mortals be! Julie Schumacher proves the point and makes the most of it in this delicious romp of satire.
Download or read book The Library of Literary Criticism of English and American Authors 1855 1874 written by Charles Wells Moulton and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 814 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Critic written by Jeannette Leonard Gilder and published by . This book was released on 1904 with total page 586 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Poking a Dead Frog written by Mike Sacks and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2014-06-24 with total page 475 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY NPR Amy Poehler, Mel Brooks, Adam McKay, George Saunders, Bill Hader, Patton Oswalt, and many more take us deep inside the mysterious world of comedy in this fascinating, laugh-out-loud-funny book. Packed with behind-the-scenes stories—from a day in the writers’ room at The Onion to why a sketch does or doesn’t make it onto Saturday Night Live to how the BBC nearly erased the entire first season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus—Poking a Dead Frog is a must-read for comedy buffs, writers and pop culture junkies alike.
Download or read book Literary Journalism in British and American Prose written by Doug Underwood and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-05-10 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debate surrounding "fake news" versus "real" news is nothing new. From Jonathan Swift's work as an acerbic, anonymous journal editor-turned-novelist to reporter Mark Twain's hoax stories to Mary Ann Evans' literary reviews written under her pseudonym, George Eliot, famous journalists and literary figures have always mixed fact, imagination and critical commentary to produce memorable works. Contrasting the rival yet complementary traditions of "literary" or "new" journalism in Britain and the U.S., this study explores the credibility of some of the "great" works of English literature.
Download or read book The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes written by John Gross and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The New Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes, master anthologist John Gross brings together a delectable smorgasbord of literary tales, offering striking new insight into some of the most important writers in history. Many of the anecdotes here are funny, others are touching, outrageous, sinister, inspiring, or downright weird. They show writers from Chaucer to Bob Dylan acting both unpredictably and deeply in character. The range is wide--this is a book which finds room for Milton and Shakespeare, Mark Twain and Walt Whitman, Kurt Vonnegut and P. G. Wodehouse, Chinua Achebe and Salman Rushdie, James Baldwin and Tom Wolfe. It is also a book in which you can find out which great historian's face was once mistaken for a baby's bottom, which film star experienced a haunting encounter with Virginia Woolf not long before her death, and what Agatha Christie really thought of her popular character Hercule Poirot. It is in short an unrivalled collection of literary gossip offering intimate glimpses into the lives of authors ranging from Shakespeare to Philip Roth--a book not just for lovers of literature, but for anyone with a taste for the curiosities of human nature.
Download or read book The Reciter s Second Treasury of Verse Serious and Humorous written by Ernest Guy Pertwee and published by . This book was released on 1912 with total page 768 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book 1855 1874 written by Charles Wells Moulton and published by . This book was released on 1910 with total page 812 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Random House Book of Humor for Children written by Pamela Pollack and published by Random House Books for Young Readers. This book was released on 1988 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A humor collection for middle graders composed of thirty-four prose selections--short stories and chunks from novels.
Download or read book American Humor written by Constance Rourke and published by New York Review of Books. This book was released on 2004-02-29 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Stepping out of the darkness, the American emerges upon the stage of history as a new character, as puzzling to himself as to others. American Humor, Constance Rourke's pioneering "study of the national character," singles out the archetypal figures of the Yankee peddler, the backwoodsman, and the blackface minstrel to illuminate the fundamental role of popular culture in fashioning a distinctive American sensibility. A memorable performance in its own right, American Humor crackles with the jibes and jokes of generations while presenting a striking picture of a vagabond nation in perpetual self-pursuit. Davy Crockett and Henry James, Jim Crow and Emily Dickinson rub shoulders in a work that inspired such later critics as Pauline Kael and Lester Bangs and which still has much to say about the America of Bob Dylan and Thomas Pynchon, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.
