Showing results by author "ciesse" in All Categories

A series of essays offering a humorous look at commonplace items and occurrences. (Summary by Nick Bulka)

While hunting, the boy Anchises stumbles upon Venus's forest retreat and is so kindly entertained by the goddess that he becomes the proud father of Aeneas, the hero of Vergil's Aeneid. The poem is an epyllion like Marlowe's "Hero and Leander" and Shakespeare's "Venus and Adonis," a short erotic poem with a mythological subject. The style is Spenserian, the stanzas rhyming ababbccc.When Brittain's Ida was published in 1628, the publisher ascribed it to Edmund Spenser. However, in 1926 Ethel Seaton discovered and published Fletcher's original manuscript, whose opening stanzas make clear that ...

Semi-autobiographical series of incidents in the life of an intellectual American family in the late 19th - early 20th Century as seen by favored daughter, Sylvia Marshall. Her father is an economics professor in a Midwestern state university and she is following in his inquisitive footsteps. Canfield writes this in a matter-of-fact manner with Tarkingtonesque good humor. ( Summary by BellonaTimes )

This book (eleven short stories) was also published under the title of “The Old Home House”. Joseph Crosby Lincoln (1870 – 1944) was an American author of novels, poems, and short stories, many set in a fictionalized Cape Cod. Lincoln's work frequently appeared in popular magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and The Delineator.... Lincoln claimed that he was satisfied "spinning yarns" that made readers feel good about themselves and their neighbors. Two of his stories have been adapted to film. Lincoln's literary career celebrating "old Cape Cod" can partly be seen as an attempt ...

The Bab Ballads are a collection of light verse by W. S. Gilbert, illustrated with his own comic drawings. Gilbert wrote the Ballads before he became famous for his comic opera librettos with Arthur Sullivan. In writing the Bab Ballads, Gilbert developed his unique "topsy-turvy" style, where the humour was derived by setting up a ridiculous premise and working out its logical consequences, however absurd. The Ballads also reveal Gilbert's cynical and satirical approach to humour. They became famous on their own, as well as being a source for plot elements, characters and songs that Gilbert ...

A collection containing a parody on Problem Plays, as well as humorous anecdotes from Canadian humourist Stephen Leacock. (Summary by TriciaG)Cast for Section 1:Narrator/Stage Directions – Tricia GSir John – Algy PugLady Cecily – Liberty StumpValet – Bob GonzalezMr. Harding – John HoerrFrench Maid – Annabelle LiPostal Messenger & “A Man” – David LawrenceMrs. Harding – Bev J. StevensAudio edited by Tricia G

Es findet ein großes Diner statt im Hause des Kommerzienrates Rosenthal v. Muffelseck, und unter den geladenen Gästen befindet sich auch der Geheimrat von Schatz. Der Geheimrat ist Gastrosoph, d.h., er sieht ein Gastmahl wie dieses als eine hohe Kunst, die mit einem Theaterstück vergleichbar ist. Zwischen den Geschmacksexplosionen bei Tische wendet er sich außerdem noch seiner Tischnachbarin, der schönen Gräfin Erlach zu, deren Hand er sich fast so sehr wünscht wie den nächsten Gang. Die Gräfin ist jedoch weniger an einer Partie für sich selbst interessiert als daran, die Tochter des...

The pieces gathered into this volume were, with two exceptions, written for the entertainment of a private circle, without any view to publication. The editor would express her thanks to the writers, who, at her solicitation, have allowed them to be printed. They are published with the hope of aiding a work of charity,—the establishment of an Agency for the benefit of the poor in Cambridge,—to which the proceeds of the sale will be devoted. (Summary by Anne W. Abbot, ed)

The estimable gentleman, Chunder Bindabun Bhosh, ESQ., B.A., travels from his native India to England, with his impeccable English and manners, which immediately mark him as a foreigner, and embarks on an enviable program of escapades. These stories are the product of the fertile imagination of Hurry Bungsho Jabberjee, B.A., a nom de plume for the humorist F. Anstey, which is a further nom de plume for Thomas Anstey Guthrie. Whether rescuing a nubile maiden from a charging bull or falling in love with said nubile maiden, Mr. Bosh, B. A. cannot help but perform with the requisite humor to ...

"Sometimes, in a mood of Spanish castles, there flits across my fancy the vision of an ancient city on a hill-top, with lofty battlements thrust upward from the rock and towers that stand on tip-toe…. Our stage is the square of this ancient city, seen dimly in the night.... The time of our play is remote and I choose to think the world is flat, that comets are of evil prophecy and witches still ride on the windy moon...." Published in the same book as "Wappin' Wharf: A Frightful Comedy of Pirates", this story is subtitled "A Frightful Comedy of Beggars". The play describes skulduggery at the...

"Alice au Pays des Merveilles," publié originellement par Lewis Carroll en 1865 comme "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," fut traduit en 1869 par Henri Bué. Histoire de fantaisie, il s'agit d'une jeune fille, Alice, qui tombe dans un trou de lapin, et se trouve tout d'un coup dans un monde de merveilles. Là, elle rencontre plusieurs personnages curieux, comme le chat du Cheshire, le Chapelier, le Lièvre de Mars, Humpty Dumpty, la Fausse-tortue, la Reine de Coeurs, parmi d'autres. Pas destiné d'origine à se faire livre d'enfants, Alice s'embrouille dans un monde cauchemardesque, peuplé ...

Bealby is the comical story of the escapade of a thirteen-year-old boy when he rebels against his placement as a steward's-room boy in the great house of an estate named Shonts (his stepfather, Mr. Darling, is a gardener there) and flees—not, however, before thoroughly upsetting a weekend party where the nouveau riche couple renting Shonts is entertaining the Lord Chancellor. - Summary by Wikipedia

The Bachelors' Club is a sanctuary for an elite group of London's unmarried men to gather. To qualify as a Bachelor, each had to undergo a strict background check to ensure that they were not only unmarried, but a zealot in the movement that held marriage to be an undue punishment...upon women. As our story goes, we learn many revealing things about these men's convictions and pasts, as well as insightful commentaries on life and society in 1890 that is markedly similar to today. Summary by Keith Salis

This begins with an odd inheritance at the end of a honeymoon, both parties being inexperienced. Then someone comes to visit, then another, until we've got a chaotic bedlam of New England's tragically off the wall odd-ball relations. Our protagonists may not communicate efficiently at first but at least they've got a sense of humour. The humourous style keeps up as well as some moments of lustre and rich feeling about the printed word itself. (Introduction by D. Wor)

Another delightful example of an English writer poking fun at his countrymen, or maybe all races' reactions to someone from a different background.A series of adventures of a well educated foreigner in London which originally appeared weekly in Punch, sometimes with illustrations, dealing with the difficulties of fully understanding a different culture.The hero's perfect English reminds one of a quote from "My Fair Lady" ..."His English is too good, he said, "that clearly indicates that he is Foreign. Whereas other people are instructed in their native language English people aren't." (Summary...

In this charming girl's book we meet again the four chums of Dandelion Cottage. Their friendship knit closer than ever by their summer at playing house, the girls enlarge their activity by mothering a pretty little Indian baby."Those who have read Dandelion Cottage will need no urge to follow further. . . . A lovable group of four children, happily not perfect, but full of girlish plans and pranks and a delightful sense of humor." - Summary from the book

"Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich" is a work of humorous fiction by Stephen Leacock first published in 1914. It is the follow-up to his 1912 classic "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town." Like that work, it is a sequence of interlocking stories set in one town, but instead of focusing on a small Canadian town in the countryside, it is set in a major American metropolis and its characters are the upper crust of society. Although currently not as well-known as the earlier book, "Arcadian Adventures" was extremely popular in North America at the time of its publication and for a while was ...

This is a collection of ten humorous short stories (Summary by Carolin)

Published in 1910, the young sisters, Barbara and Mollie Thurston, are being invited by their skilled friend, Ruth Stuart, to go on a real-life adventure in a motor car, for Ruth is a girl who actually can drive a motor car, to Newport with a chaperone, Aunt Sallie, and friend Grace Carter. Horse shenanigans come into play as well as protecting themselves from a burglary. Many hopes arise in their revels as well as wondering if or when women shall get “the vote”. Much culminates in the upcoming tennis tournament taking place at their destination and the danger of a jewel thief amidst them,...

The conversion of an indifferent father and mother, through the death of an only child, is well told in another story by Fr Finn, S.J. entitled Ada Merton. (Donahoe's Magazine 1897)