This collection of the 258 known, publicly-printed interviews of Mark Twain was compiled by Gary Scharnhorst and published by the University of Alabama Press. The interviews are in the Public Domain, and our thanks go to Gary Scharnhorst and the University of Alabama for making them available for this Public Domain audio recording. They were compiled in the University of Alabama Press book entitled "Mark Twain: The Complete Interviews" and are arranged, chronologically, from Twain's first authenticated interview in 1871, to his last interview in 1910...

This collection of the 195 known, publicly-printed speeches of Mark Twain was compiled by Paul Fatout and published by the University of Iowa Press. The speeches are in the Public Domain, and our thanks go to the University of Iowa for making them available for this Public Domain audio recording. They were compiled in the University of Iowa Press book entitled "Mark Twain Speaking" and are arranged, chronologically, from Twain's first authenticated public speech in 1864, to his last speech, exactly 7 months before he died. Extensive analysis , notes, appendix and index are included in the printed work. - Summary by John Greenman

Mark Twain wrote these two diaries, or rather as he insists, 'translated them from the original manuscripts', late in his writing career. The freshness, wonder and excitement of exploring a new world permeates Eve's thoughts as she takes great joy in her very existence and loves everything about it. To me this is obviously a posthumous love-letter to Twain's wife Olivia Langdon Clemens, or Livy, who died in June 1904, but others may disagree. Adam's diary is different and he comes across as a somewhat surly person who just wants to be alone and think his thoughts...

The complete collection of works using this title. Other versions, including the Project Gutenberg version, have been radically shortened. Mark Twain published several collections of his short stories and essays. This collection, like the others, dramatically demonstrates the eclectic nature of his work and the depth of his humanistic thinking. Each essay stands alone. Listeners will find many instances where modern times come to mind.

This collection of Mark Twain travel letters was compiled by Barbara Schmidt for her website, TwainQuotes.com. According to his biographer, Albert Bigelow Paine, when Twain took his family to Europe in June of 1891, he left with the knowledge that the McClure Syndicate and W. M. Laffan of the New York Sun would pay him one thousand dollars each for six travel letters. Twain’s letters eventually appeared in numerous papers including the Chicago Sunday Tribune, Atlanta Constitution, Boston Globe in addition to the New York Sun...

This collection of articles came from Mark Twain's travels and experiences abroad. While many had been previously published, there also were many that had never before seen the light of day...which one reviewer said had never been Twain's intent for them, having consigned them to obscurity. With introductory essays by Brander Matthews and Albert Bigelow Paine, the book paints a clear picture of the complexity and wide variety of Samuel L. Clemens' thinking, where it originated and how it developed.

Light hearted, entertaining and amusing as it takes on contemporary American life would best describe The Wit and Humor of America by Marshall Pinckney Wilder whish is a compilation of humorous passages from various works of American literature. Ranging from Harriet Beecher Stowe's Dinah's Kitchen to Dislikes by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Little Orphint Annie by James Whitcomb Riley, The Auto Rubaiyat by Reginald Wright Kauffman, Garden Ethics by Charles Dudley Warner and Morris and the Honorable Tim by Myra Kelley and many more delightful pieces, the book is indeed a treasure trove of humor...

This warm, affectionate duet of essays by two of the early twentieth century's most popular writers is a bit dated but still entertaining.

Mary Roberts Rinehart wrote 6 books about the elderly Letitia (Tish) Carberry and the escapades she gets her elderly lady cronies into. The series led to a 1942 movie with Marjorie Main. This particular book, the third in the series, was written after Mary's stint as a war correspondent in Belgium during the first World War.

Letitia, Aggie and Lizzie are at it again, solving mysteries, getting into scrapes. Is there no end to the antics of these three spinster ladies? A murder at a hospital, reuniting lovers, a mangy dog or does it have fleas? The hilarious and often perilous adventures of Letitia Carberry. - Summary by Sandra More stories at Tish: The Chronicle of Her Escapades and Excursions More Tish

‘A wickedly funny 1911 satire on undergraduate life in Edwardian Oxford’ in which the entire student body of Oxford university including the young, handsome aristocrat the Duke of Dorset falls hopelessly in love with Zuleika who is visiting her grandfather, the warden of Judas college, and ultimately commit mass suicide at the end of ‘Eights Week’

Originally compiled by Cervantes himself in 1613 as a collection of "exemplary" stories, this translated version from 1881 brings these stories to the English reader. Included in the collection are twelve stories selected by Cervantes, including "A Deceitful Marriage," which famously transitions seamlessly and humorously into the "Dialogue Between Scipio and Berganze".

Meet the Golovliovs, the ultimate dysfunctional family. In the difficult transition years before and after the liberation of Russia’s serfs, the Golovliovs are a gentry family ill-equipped to face the adaptations necessary in the new social order. Petty, back-biting, greedy, rigid, ignorant, and cruel, their personalities are captured in the array of nicknames they themselves give each other: The Hag, Little Judas, Simple Simon, Pavel the Sneak, the Orphans, the Blood-Sucker. They hate each other ferociously and utterly despise the peasants around them, who are gradually awakening to the potentialities of their new freedoms...

In 1661 and 1662 Moliere presented the plays The School for Husbands and then The School for Wives. "The central situations of the two have much in common: the arbitrary and jealous lover to whom circumstances have given almost the authority of a husband: the simple ward rescued from physical constraint by the unfettered cunning of love." In between writing the two plays he got married. Listen to both and see if this comedic genius of the farce changed his attitude. - Summary by ToddHW and The Translator Cast...

In 1661 and 1662 Moliere presented the plays The School for Husbands and then The School for Wives . "The central situations of the two have much in common: the arbitrary and jealous lover to whom circumstances have given almost the authority of a husband: the simple ward rescued from physical constraint by the unfettered cunning of love." In between writing the two plays Moliere got married. Listen to both and see if this comedic genius of the farce changed his attitude. - Summary by ToddHW and...

The setup here is that Moliere and his troupe have been sent for by the King to come perform at Versailles. But instead of the piece they had prepared, the King has just asked for an entirely new piece - to be ready later that same day! So all the action of the play takes place backstage as Moliere has to come up with a story and the troupe has to select and prepare roles in a mad panic. Many of the comments in the banter between actors concern personages from Moliere's time - we don't necessarily know them but the biting of the satire still comes clearly through...

Montague Glass was a lawyer who eventually abandoned the practice of law to write full time. He wrote a series of stories in the New York Post about a pair of popular characters in the predominantly Jewish garment trade. Many of the plots were derived from trade problems he saw as a lawyer. This is the second book of the collected stories; his Potash and Perlmutter stories were also made into stage plays and even movies that were very popular in their time. - Summary by ToddHW

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

Dead Souls by Nikolai Gogol, Russian writer, was first published in 1842, and is one of the most prominent works of 19th-century Russian literature. Gogol himself saw it as an “epic poem in prose”, and within the book as a “novel in verse”. Despite supposedly completing the trilogy’s second part, Gogol destroyed it shortly before his death. Although the novel ends in mid-sentence (like Sterne’s Sentimental Journey), it is usually regarded as complete in the extant form. In Russia before the emancipation of the serfs in 1861, landowners were entitled to own serfs to farm their land...

A Terrible Thing in the Form of a Literary Torpedo which is Launched for HILARIOUS PURPOSES ONLY. Inaccurate in Every Particular Containing Copious Etymological Derivations and Other Useless Things by Noah Lott (an ex-relative of Noah Webster)

Bunyip Bluegum the koala sets out on his travels taking only a walking stick. At about lunchtime, feeling more than slightly peckish, he meets Bill Barnacle the sailor and Sam Sawnoff the penguin who are eating a pudding. The pudding is a magic one which, no matter how much you eat it, always reforms into a whole pudding again. He is called Albert, has thin arms and legs and is a bad-tempered, ill-mannered so-and-so into the bargain. His only pleasure is being eaten. The book is divided into four "slices" instead of chapters. (Introduction by Wikipedia)

If Jefferson "Parleyvoo" Pickens had appeared in print just a few years later, he might have been the "Gentle Grifter" instead of the "Gentle Grafter", the name O. Henry picked for him. His situation as an ethical graft artist gives Jeff an extra impediment in pursuing his craft, but he never wanted it to be too easy. The result is fourteen delightful tales for us and a number of new partners for him. With those partners (he always has at least one) he works his way through a number of confidence games...

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

Is there a genre called FUN? Yes, and this is it! Insanely humorous geography that will have you rolling on the floor laughing with your sides hurting.

George Oliver Onions (1873 – 1961) was a British writer of story collections and over 40 novels…. Onions wrote detective fiction, social comedy, historical fiction and romance novels. This social comedy of late Victorian England is among his first published materials. Rollo Butterfield, the compleat bachelor, looks upon his family and friends with an affectionate, gently humorous eye.

This is a small collection of whimsical poems by the American physician and author Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. "The Deacon's Masterpiece" describes the "logical" outcome of building an object (in this case, a two-wheeled carriage called a shay) that has no weak points. The economic term "one hoss shay," referring to a certain model of depreciation, derives its name from this poem. "How the Old Horse Won the Bet" is a lighthearted look at a horse race. Finally, "The Broomstick Train" is a wonderfully Halloween-y explanation of how an electric tram really works.

One of the greatest works of poetry in history, this lyric poem presents the deep feelings and emotions of the poet on subjects such as life, death, love, God and destiny.

An American diplomat's family moves into an ancient stately mansion. They're warned by the owner that it is haunted by a most horrifying and gruesome spirit who had once cruelly murdered his own wife. The story progresses with creaking floor boards, mysterious passages, dark attics, clanking chains, and weird howling. Yet, the reader is totally unprepared for Oscar Wilde's brand of tongue in cheek humor as he takes all the ingredients of a traditional ghost story and turns it on its head, and creates a hilarious parody instead of a morbid saga! The Canterville Ghost was the first of Oscar Wilde's short stories to be published...

In 1894, Oscar Wilde (1854-1900) published two short collections of aphorisms: “A Few Maxims For The Instruction Of The Over-Educated”, in the Saturday Review newspaper, and “Phrases and Philosophies for the Use of the Young”, in the Oxford student magazine The Chameleon. By turns witty, intellectual, counter-intuitive and obtuse, the collections came to be seen by many as emblematic of Wilde’s style, and countless collections of Wildean aphorisms have since been published.

A parody of its famous predecessor, this short piece was written by Owen Wister for the Harvard Lampoon

Pretty, charming, but impoverished Sally Nicholas' humdrum life is turned upside down when fate decides to step in. In this breezy, romantic comedy, PG Wodehouse delights readers with his portrayal of a charming young American girl who unexpectedly inherits a fortune which changes her life forever. The story follows Sally's fortunes and is told in Wodehouse's typical humorous style and keeps the reader thoroughly entertained to the very end. First published in 1921 as a serial in Collier's Magazine in the US and in 1922 in the Grand Magazine, UK it appeared in book form titled Mostly Sally in 1922...

If you're encountering the zany Bertie Wooster and his exceptionally astute Man Friday, Jeeves, for the first time, be assured that you're embarking on a lifetime of fun and laughter! On the other hand, for eternal Wodehouse fans, Right Ho Jeeves provides more glimpses of the delightful world created by one of the best loved English writers. It is the second in the series of Bertie Wooster and Jeeves novels and features some of the regular characters of Brinkley Court, the country seat ruled over by Bertie's much-loved Aunt Dahlia...