Frank T. Bullen is best known for his books based on his adventures at sea. However, he had a life on shore as well. He first went to sea as a boy as a cabin boy. He there had many adventures as a hand on a whaling ship. He then came ashore and tried his hand at being a "Tradesman". This is that story and also tells how he became the well-known author he is now. It is a very interesting, enjoyable and entertaining depiction of the trials and tribulations he had in his life in 19th century London as a tradesman. - Summary by Wayne Cooke

"Captain Billy's Whiz Bang" was an iconic magazine of American wit and humor launched by W.H. Fawcett in 1919. Each 64-page issue is packed with jokes, quips, and humorous bits of writing. Each year it grew in popularity, and Fawcett’s success lead to the formation of the well-known Fawcett Publications, which issued "Whiz Comics" and introduced Captain Marvel. The magazine was immortalized in a line in the song “Trouble” from Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man.” - Summary by Larry Wilson

More humorous adventures by the world’s most misunderstood English boy. - Summary by david wales

The fun adventures of Georgie, Swatty, and Bony, as they encounter flooding rivers, emotional girls, burning buildings, rotten stumps, mean teachers, a haunted house, dark caves, murderers, and ice jams.

"Captain Billy's Whiz Bang" was an iconic magazine of American wit and humor launched by W.H. Fawcett in 1919. Each 64-page issue is packed with jokes, quips, and humorous bits of writing. Each year it grew in popularity, and Fawcett’s success lead to the formation of the well-known Fawcett Publications, which issued "Whiz Comics" and introduced Captain Marvel. The magazine was immortalized in a line in the song “Trouble” from Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man.” - Summary by Larry Wilson

Dorothy Parker was a poet, writer and satirist of the foibles of the early 20th century , and a founding member of New York’s Algonquin Round Table, a group of prominent artistic and social critics, actors and wits. This is a short collection of humorously critical descriptions of various men on the periphery of her “inner circle,” which explain why they are men she is not married to. - Summary by Kirsten Wever

Pearl Leavitt is habitually fired from her New York City office jobs for being "too beautiful" and thereby causing all the men to fall in love with her. Fed up, she decides to take a job in the Hamptons as a governess for three over-indulged children. - Summary by Nancy Halper

Aldous Huxley is best known as a philosopher and novelist – notably as the author of Brave New World. He also wrote poetry, short stories and critical essays. Most of his work is somewhat dark and mildly sardonic, partly because he came of age just after World War I, when all of Europe was in a state of cultural, political and social confusion. His novel, Crome Yellow, is a prime example. Mortal Coils includes four short stories and a play, including one of the author’s most famous short works: "The Gioconda Smile." - Summary by Kirsten Wever

Inspired by "Lives of the Saints", fat, lazy, good-for-nothing Harvey Redding decides to give up the junk-collecting business, and become a Saint. Meanwhile, deeply in debt to his sister, he has left his son Lem with her until he is able to pay her back.

The world’s most confident, most chaos-creating eleven year old boy is at it again in these fourteen glorious and funny 1924 short stories. - Summary by David Wales

A humorous comedy of errors and light-hearted wit in the life of the likeable John Henry. When it comes to betting at the races, booze, his friends, and his woman Clara Jane, it's never a dull moment. The Hot-Air Association is in full session! Will Clara continue to go "down the line" with John Henry?

A Deal with the Devil is a classic tale with a humorous twist. We find that on the night preceeding his 100th birthday Grandpapa, a cantankerous yet loveable sort, has made a deal with the devil, which his granddaughter, in part, will pay. - Summary by Angelique G. Campbell

When you're tired only because you're bored; and you're bored only because it seems like there's really nothing worth doing; and you're so, so wealthy that one would think opportunity should be knocking at your door every day... you sometimes just have to tell your closer friends how fatiguing the life of he who has everything really is.... And then; you find your calling!

When either Bertie Wooster or his friends found themselves in the soup or in dangerous proximity to the tureen, the instinct of one and all was to turn to Jeeves - Bertie's Man. He understood human nature, especially that of gilded youth. It did not matter if the hope of an ancient house had fallen in love with a waitress, or if Bertie's cousins Claude and Eustace had been playing dido; Jeeves never failed. His was a sound brain. The only thing in which Jeeves failed, that is in his master's eyes, was that he could not always go the whole way with him in the matter of spats, socks and ties, particularly in the Spring - Jeeves was a purist...

“Dandy Dick” was the third of the farces which Mr. Pinero wrote for the old Court Theatre—a series of plays which, besides giving playgoers a fresh source of laughter, and the English stage a new order of comic play, brought plentiful prosperity to the joint management of Mr. Arthur Cecil and the late Mr. John Clayton. - Summary by Cast list: The Very Reverend Augustin Jedd, DD, Dean of St Marvells: ToddHW Sir Tristram Mardon, Bart: Son of the Exiles Major Tarver, -th Hussars, quartered at Durnstone near St Marvells: Craig Franklin Mr...

A whimsical collection of stories about a wandering street urchin, Lazarillo de Tormes is a classic of the Spanish Golden Age, even paid homage in Cervantes’ Don Quixote. Rendered homeless by the arrest of his father and poverty of his mother, the boy Lazarillo has no choice but to go out and find masters to serve. Unfortunately, each of his masters is worse than the one before, and in each case Lazarillo is cast upon his own wits in order to survive. Clever, hungry, and desperate, he always has a sharp eye for lessons on how to outwit the greedy and unscrupulous people who surround him...

This 1910 short work is by the English-born American humorist, satirist, and illustrator Oliver Herford, aided by another caricaturist and illustrator, John Cecil Clay. Herford’s books were usually short and quite popular in their time. He is a master of the witty remark and joke, i.e., “Many are called but few get up” and “Only the young die good”. Cupid’s Cyclopedia is a jesting alphabetical list of words and their definitions dealing with the course of true love; the book closes with an essay on the same subject entitled “Amoria,” a tongue-in-cheek imaginative travelogue on “the most ancient and honorable country upon the earth’s surface...

On duty with Lloyds of London in NYC, young Richard Minot is sent to the St Augustine-ish town of San Marco to ensure that a wealthy young lady, Cynthia Meyrick marry his firm's client, Lord Harrowby. Then, in a meet-cute on a slow-moving train, Minot meets the very enticing Miss Meyrick and... reconsiders his duty. - Summary by Matt Pierard

This 1903 book is a tongue-in-cheek send-up of English people and subjects. Within the humor , the listener may be surprised by some diamond-hard observations. The listener is also alerted to some attitudes of a different time that would not be acceptable in today's polite discourse. Here writing as “Angus McNeil”, a Scotsman, Crosland was a British author, poet, and journalist .

Published in 1908, this is a further collection of twelve humorous short stories about English school boys. The author wrote two other books in this series: The Human Boy and The Human Boy And The War . Eden Phillpotts was popular with the reading public and wrote prolifically novels, short stories, poetry, plays, and nonfiction. - Summary by David Wales

Thirty four whimsical, tongue-in-cheek, and entertaining essays about not much in particular, published in 1902, by one of the most popular writers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The American Gelett Burgess was an artist, art critic, poet, author, and humorist. Nonsense verse was a specialty. - Summary by David Wales

This book is best described by its subtitle: “DETAILING the Adventures, Comic and Pathetic of one Jimmy Martin, Purveyor of Publicity, a Young Gentleman Possessing Sublime Nerve, Whimsical Imagination, Colossal Impudence, and, Withal the Heart of a Child.” Jimmy, press agent extraordinaire, conjures up outlandish and truth-stretching publicity stunts for an amusement park, theaters and performers, often with unexpected and amusing results. Despite his foibles, Jimmy presses on in pursuit of career success and of pretty Lolita Murphy of Cedar Rapids, Iowa...

An 1883 tongue-in-cheek spoof of manners and mannerisms of “society”. ‘the “Open Sesame” to that jealously-guarded realm,—good society,—in which you aspire to circulate freely and shine with becoming luster…. And I, the author of this code of warnings, as truly say unto you, that a contemptuous disregard of the same will be likely to lead you into mortification and embarrassment, if not into being incontinently kicked out of doors…. It will be, in truth, a bosom companion in the happiest sense of the term, a mutely eloquent monitor of deportment, a still, small voice as to what is in good form and what is not.’ - Summary by Book Preface and david wales

As the title suggests we are treated to three humourous and curious psychical transpositions in the cases of "When Reginald was Caroline," "How Chopin came to Remsen," and "Clarissa's troublesome baby" . If you're looking for a break from more serious fare you can count on this one to amuse and entertain you. Summary by Celine Major.

There can really be no excuse for this last book of trite and beautiful sayings. I do not attempt, in any way, to palliate this great wrong. I would not do so even if I had an idea what palliate meant. . . . I have taken great care to thoroughly eradicate anything that would have the appearance of poetry in this work, and there is not a thought or suggestion contained in it that would soil the most delicate fabric. Do not read it all at once, however, in order to see whether he married the girl or not. Take a little at a time, and it will cure gloom on the "similia simili-bus curanter" principle. - Summary by Bill Nye

Ralph Keeler failed as a novelist, but this autobiography reflects a life well-lived with humor and adventure. Keeler was in the same literary circle as satirist Bret Harte, novelist Charles Warren Stoddard, editor Thomas Bailey Aldrich, and essayist William Dean Howells. He so impressed Mark Twain that Twain wrote an essay about him called "Ralph Keeler". In 1873, on his way to Cuba, he reportedly was thrown overboard by a Spanish loyalist who objected to his backing of the revolutionary, anti-Spanish movement. - Summary by John Greenman

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 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

Published in 1921 , "Hail and Farewell" is a collection of poems in honour of alcohol, drunkenness, and all things related.In "The Old Soak", an old codger grumbles and connives to get alcohol in the age of Prohibition. Part is narrative, and part is installments from The Old Soak's papers. “I'm writing a diary. A diary of the past. A kind of gol-dinged autobiography of what me and Old King Booze done before he went into the grave and took one of my feet with him. In just a little while now there won't be any one in this here broad land of ours, speaking of it geographically, that knows what an old-fashioned barroom was like...

Hamlet is Jeremy’s dog. This 1923 book is Hugh Walpole’s second volume in his Jeremy semi-autobiographical trilogy , Jeremy at Crale ), about a ten-year-old English boy. One commentator wrote this of the first book: “With affectionate humor, Mr. Walpole tells the story of Jeremy and his two sisters, Helen and Mary Cole, who grow up in Polchester, a quiet English Cathedral town…. Mr. Walpole has given his narrative a rare double appeal, for it not only recreates for the adult the illusion of his own happiest youth, but it unfolds for the child-reader a genuine and moving experience with real people and pleasant things...

A book of poems and short stories. - Summary by Fritz

Carleton B. Case is well known for wit and humor, as the title of the book leads one to believe this book will follow suit. - Summary by April6090

This collection of eleven short stories is packed with Henry Wallace Phillips' offbeat humor. You will find a trolley car driver, bored with his route, who decides to drive around town instead. There are a couple of men unfamiliar with the basic properties of a canoe. And watch out for the curse of the chewing gum. Fun to read. Fun to record