Humor Books

The Importance of Being Earnest

Oscar Wilde

The Importance of being Earnest, A Trivial Comedy for Serious People is Oscar Wilde's most popular and successful play. First performed in London in 1895, it ran for eighty-six performances. Wilde's p..

Candide

Voltaire

This is a gold nugget of literature. Although I do not especially like Voltaire's mentality in general, however, this book: Candide, is pure philosophy... in action, as well as in vivid colours! ..

The Innocents Abroad

Mark Twain

Mark Twain's 1869 book The Innocents Abroad; or, The New Pilgrims' Progress is a humorous travelogue of a voyage Twain undertook two years earlier. He'd sent letters to the newspapers about his steams..

Pygmalion

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion: A Romance in Five Acts (1912) is one of greatest comic masterpieces of the 20th century. It's hard now to imagine how a play about a phonetics expert who decides to co..

Die Physiologie und Psychologie des Lachens und des Komischen

Ewald Hecker

If I lay the present little book on the Christmas table for you, dear Kahlbaum, I know, of course, that I will not make you unexpected surprise with it; for you knew about the creation of the little w..

Laughter - An Essay on the Meaning of the Comic

Henri Bergson

This work, by Professor Bergson, has been revised in detail by the author himself, and the present translation is the only authorised one. For this ungrudging labour of revision, for the thoroughness ..

Billy Baxter's Letters

William J. Kountz, Jr

In presenting this work, we believe that an explanation is due the reader as to why the letters are given in their present form at this time. The first book published, "One Night," was "issued by The ..

The American Credo

H.L. Mencken

The superficial, no doubt, will mistake this little book for a somewhat laborious attempt at jocosity. Because, incidentally to its main purpose, it unveils occasional ideas of so inordinate an errone..