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Humour — page 11
558 public-domain humour books, summarised. Page 11 of 12.
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George O. (George Oliver) Smith
A breakthrough in atomic transmission offers humanity the promise of near-instant transit, but the invention threatens to spark a legal war that could collapse the fragile economy of space commerce.
The Duenna: A Comic Opera
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
A spirited, classic farce of mistaken identities and romantic intrigue, this play centers on a clever daughter’s scheme to outwit her father and claim the suitor of her choice.
The Sloths of Kruvny
Vern Fearing
The universe is a vast, cold place, but it is made marginally more tolerable by the arrival of a pair of bumbling, well-meaning space travelers who approach cosmic catastrophe with a shrug.
Punch, Or The London Charivari, Volume 102, January 30, 1892
Various
A panoramic look at late-Victorian British society, capturing the anxieties, hypocrisies, and absurdities of a nation caught between tradition and modern friction.
That Awful Letter: A Comedy for Girls
Edna I. MacKenzie
A city snob attempts to scare off a country cousin with a cruel letter, only to find the cousin is a brilliant actress who has planned a retaliatory performance of her own.
Pastoral Affair
Charles A. Stearns
A persistent man, a mysterious hermit, and an island of silent, robed observers collide in a strange, sun-baked landscape. This narrative examines the intersection of cold political ideology and the untamable, biological impulses of life.
The Philistine
Various
A defiant, self-styled "periodical of protest," this collection captures the biting wit, literary posturing, and contrarian spirit of the late nineteenth-century American intellectual underground.
Two Whole Glorious Weeks
Will Mohler
The future offers every luxury imaginable, yet the wealthy find themselves so spiritually hollow that they voluntarily pay to endure forced labor, hunger, and physical abuse in the Catskill Mountains to feel alive again.
The Blue Peter: Sea comedies
Morley Roberts
A seasoned ship’s master finds himself trapped in a life of stagnant indignity, nursing a desperate, secret hunger to finally settle the score with the callous owners who built their fortune on the ruins of his career.
Circular Saws
Humbert Wolfe
These brief, sharp fables offer a cynical yet luminous anatomy of human folly, stripping away the pretenses of society to reveal the uncomfortable truths beneath. They act as mirrors for the absurd, reflecting the world back in a series of caustic, intellectual snapshots.
Fish Fry
Arnold Marmor
A chance encounter on the Florida coast leads to a surreal diplomatic mission that ends in domestic catastrophe. The story explores the absurdity of human ignorance and the fragility of first contact.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 10, June 4, 1870
Various
Street smarts, political posturing, and nineteenth-century commercial hustle clash in a sharp-witted weekly that captures New York City at a moment of rapid transformation.
Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 31, October 29, 1870
Various
A bustling slice of post-Civil War American satire captures a nation wrestling with political corruption, European conflict, and its own chaotic cultural identity.
The Vegans Were Curious
Winston K. (Winston Kinney) Marks
An advanced alien visitor stops at Earth out of simple curiosity, only to find himself entangled in the illogical, high-stakes, and surprisingly intoxicating customs of the human race.
Whiskaboom
Alan Arkin
A young man’s obsessive quest to harness time leads to a catastrophic, dimension-shattering accident, leaving his landlords to mail him home in a cardboard tube. This peculiar narrative explores the friction between youthful idealism and cold, profit-driven parental expectation.
A Filbert Is a Nut
Rick Raphael
This story explores the absurdity of bureaucratic panic when confronted with the impossible. A confined, unassuming man discovers a way to manifest devastating technology from mundane materials, leaving authority figures trapped between their own skepticism and the terrifying reality of his success.
Half-Hours with Great Story-Tellers: Artemus Ward, George Macdonald, Max Adeler, Samuel Lover, and Others
Various
A collection of nineteenth-century narratives blending the supernatural, the absurd, and the romantic, these stories offer a window into the varied ways writers of the era entertained their readers.
Holes, Incorporated
L. Major Reynolds
Inventors are often told that ideas alone are not enough to succeed in business. This short story explores the volatile consequences of creating a revolutionary technology without the protection of a patent or the shield of legal savvy.
No time for Toffee!
Henry Farrell
When a bullet abruptly ends a man's earthly routine, his eager, mischievous ghost and a scantily clad red-headed sprite named Toffee plunge into a wildly chaotic scramble across reality.
Once Upon a Monbeast
Charles E. Fritch
A struggling writer discovers that the monsters he dreams up for his fiction are far more than ink on a page. He learns too late that the act of creation carries a heavy, physical price.
The Honour of the Flag
William Clark Russell
A collection of maritime tales where the boundary between the natural and the supernatural dissolves into the salt spray of the nineteenth-century high seas.
The Missing Link
Edward Dyson
A rogue’s luck runs on nerve, but when a fake ape, a real murder, and five thousand pounds of paste diamonds collide, even nerve has its limits.
Punchinello, Volume 2, No. 35, November 26, 1870
Various
A satirical Victorian periodical bursts with sharp theatrical wit, sharp-tongued burlesques of contemporary literature, and irreverent commentaries on post-war politics from both sides of the Atlantic.
A jest and a vengeance
E. Hoffmann Price
Faced with a botched palace assassination and a meddlesome British Resident, an embattled sultan seeks a legendary subterranean sanctuary to exact a truly peerless vengeance.
Alice's blighted profession
Helen C. Clifford
A young woman attempting to establish a law practice in New York City finds her professional ambitions hijacked by an elaborate practical joke orchestrated by her society friends.
Forsyte's Retreat
Winston K. (Winston Kinney) Marks
The Mahoney-Plaza is a hotel that defies geometry, time, and sanity. When a beleaguered manager tries to escape his own life, he finds himself trapped in a temporal labyrinth where history and the present collide.
Love Sonnets of an Office Boy
Samuel E. (Samuel Ellsworth) Kiser
A lovestruck office boy pours his heart into a series of sonnets, fantasizing about rescuing his older colleague from danger and eventually winning her hand.
Sagittulae, Random Verses
Edward Woodley Bowling
Light arrows of verse fired from Cambridge halls track the absurdities of academic life, alpine climbs, and rural courtship with wit and gentle satire.
Sodom and Gomorrah, Texas
R. A. Lafferty
In a sun-scorched Texan sector of desolation, a census taker's impossible count of microscopic inhabitants unleashes ancient terrors and sudden atomic ruin.
The Automatic Maid-of-All-Work: A Possible Tale of the Near Future
M. L. Campbell
An inventor's automated domestic helper turns suburban family life upside down in this sharply observant, darkly comic late-nineteenth-century domestic satire.
"Hey Ma, Where's Willie?"
I. M. Bukstein
A harried farmer recounts his peculiar son's mysterious disappearance amid harvest-time lights in the sky, only to discover a startling truth in the cornfield.
When Oscar Went Wild
W. C. (Wilbur C.) Tuttle
Two cowpunchers nursing hangovers stumble into a movie crew’s frantic search for a missing, tame cougar named Oscar, triggering a chaotic misadventure in the pines.
At Hotel On-de-Blink
George P. Seiler
The lobby of a struggling hotel becomes the stage for a series of lighthearted misunderstandings, musical interludes, and eccentric characters who find themselves caught in the orbit of an unlikely imposter.
High Dragon Bump
Don Thompson
This is a story of cosmic misunderstanding, where the vast gap between advanced alien technology and human assumptions creates a high-stakes comedy of errors. It explores how intelligence—and even the interpretation of language—can fail entirely when filtered through the lens of one’s own limited experience.
Man's Best Friend
Evelyn E. Smith
The future is not a cold, mechanical certainty, but a fragile construction maintained by the most unlikely of architects. In this satirical vision, destiny is less a matter of physics and more a matter of family.
Parking, unlimited
Noel M. Loomis
HOOK A desperate scheme to solve city traffic problems using a revolutionary shrinking ray leads two partners into a chaotic race against local corruption and their own invention.
The Golfer's Rubaiyat
Henry Walcott Boynton
The golf course serves as a poignant mirror for the human condition, where the swing of a club echoes the fleeting rhythm of our own existence. Through a series of meditative verses, this work finds profound spiritual resonance in the simple, often frustrating, pursuit of a white ball across a field of green.
The Great Potlatch Riots
Allen Kim Lang
In a future where the government enforces rampant consumerism by mandating the destruction of last year's goods, one ambitious bureaucrat's plan to increase mandatory gift-giving sparks a full-scale citizen rebellion.
Wait for Weight
Jack McKenty
HOOK When a brilliant scientist accidentally invents a miraculous rocket fuel that makes space travel simple, he finds that the only thing more dangerous than a budget-cutting senator is his own automated alarm clock.
Sales Talk
H. F. Cente
A fed-up salesman quits his job to escape a dying world, only to find himself the target of a high-stakes pitch from an ancient, fading entity at the edge of time.
The Flying Cuspidors
V. R. Francis
A trumpet player’s infatuation with a new bandmate leads to an intergalactic showdown, proving that love and high-frequency jazz are more powerful than any extraterrestrial threat.
The humor of "Bill" Nye
Bill Nye
The humor of this nineteenth-century satirist turns the stiff, marble icons of American history into recognizable, flawed human beings. These sketches offer a boisterous, irreverent escape from the weight of overly solemn chronicles.
Toffee haunts a ghost
Henry Farrell
This story follows Marc Pillsworth, a man whose ordinary life is upended by the sudden arrival of a "dream-girl" named Toffee and a hard-drinking, disembodied ghost named George. After a series of impossible near-death accidents, Marc finds himself trapped in a supernatural entanglement where his professional…
Establishing Relations: Odd Craft, Part 7
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
A sailor’s impulsive attempt to woo a beautiful stranger through a reckless masquerade leads him into a labyrinth of domestic traps and unexpected consequences.
High Man
Jay Clarke
A charmingly duplicitous epistolary comedy, this story follows a debt-ridden fiancé who claims an anti-gravity accident kept him from his duties, only to find himself entangled in a game of wits against a manipulative professor.
Sorry: Wrong Dimension
Ross Rocklynne
A harried housewife’s domestic routine is upended when a bizarre, invisible creature from another dimension befriends her baby. This science fiction romp explores the collision between mundane 1950s life and the infinite, chaotic possibilities of a multi-dimensional universe.
The Ghost of Jerry Bundler
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
A group of weary travelers, huddled in a dim, firelit inn, find their nerves frayed by tales of a local specter until a reckless prank spirals into a terrifying, irreversible confrontation with the unknown.
What Rough Beast?
Jefferson Highe
A teacher discovers that the children he instructs are harboring secrets far more advanced than the crumbling society around them. In a world of failed education and deep skepticism, he realizes the terrifying truth: the visitors from the stars are not conquerors, but school-children.