Free summaries
Humour — page 6
292 public-domain humour books, summarised. Page 6 of 7.
The History of the Hen Fever. A Humorous Record
Geo. P. (George Pickering) Burnham
This satirical account captures a moment when mid-century America lost its collective mind over the breeding and exhibition of fancy chickens. It is a sharp, candid memoir of a self-aware provocateur who both fueled the frenzy and profited immensely from it.
Pine Tree Ballads: Rhymed Stories of Unplaned Human Natur' up in Maine
Holman Day
The Maine woods and coasts are home to a rugged, humorous, and deeply felt brand of humanity. These verses celebrate the lives of the plain-spoken, hard-working people who built their world among the stones and the sea.
The World Turned Upside Down
Anonymous
Where a hare hunts the dog and an ox blows a horn, the natural order collapses into whimsical chaos. This collection of verses presents a series of impossible scenarios, challenging the reader to imagine a world where the mundane becomes miraculous and the absurd becomes routine.
Wehman Bros.' Irish Yarns Wit and Humor, No. 2
Anonymous
These gathered anecdotes offer a window into a specific style of immigrant storytelling, where the collision of cultures and the misinterpretation of language serve as the primary engines of wit.
Special Delivery
Damon Knight
A young couple’s domestic life is upended by the arrival of an unborn child who possesses a lethal intellect, telepathic reach, and a profound contempt for his parents.
Jack and the Check Book
John Kendrick Bangs
Wealth, power, and the absurdity of Gilded Age finance collide when classic fairy tale heroes are dropped into the cutthroat boardrooms of early 20th-century New York. Armed with magic, these legendary figures outwit the era’s most ruthless "captains of industry" at their own game.
No Moving Parts
Murray F. Yaco
In a sterile, stagnant future where technology is designed to be perfect and permanent, a young man discovers that the only way to fix a broken ship is to break the rules of his own society.
None so deaf as those who won't hear
Herbert Pelham Curtis
A farce of crossed wires and feigned infirmity, this play turns on a father’s desperate search for a son-in-law who cannot hear his daughter’s complaints—only to find his own hearing miraculously restored.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 156, January 22, 1919
Various
This collection captures the fractured, weary, and dryly irreverent spirit of post-Armistice England, where the absurdity of bureaucracy competes with the fading echoes of a global catastrophe. It serves as a quintessential time capsule of a society attempting to laugh while picking up the pieces of a vanished world.
Do Unto Others
Mark Clifton
This story follows a cynical, observant man and his domineering aunt as they inadvertently trigger an interstellar misunderstanding through a misplaced sense of moral superiority. It explores the absurdity of imposing human values on the truly alien, suggesting that our most cherished virtues, when practiced…
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, August 27, 1892
Various
A snapshot of Victorian life, this collection captures the wit, political anxieties, and peculiar amusements of the late nineteenth century. It serves as an archive of a vanished London, preserving the laughter and frustrations of a bygone era.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 159, July 21, 1920
Various
This collection captures the sharp, cynical, and weary wit of post-war London. It serves as a time capsule of a society struggling to find its footing amidst political skepticism and the absurdity of daily life.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 15, July 9, 1870
Various
This collection serves as a vibrant, satirical time capsule, capturing the restless wit and commercial energy of post-Civil War New York through a mix of burlesque serials, sharp political commentary, and period advertising.
The Prince of Graustark
George Barr McCutcheon
The romantic entanglements of European royalty and American wealth collide in this lighthearted, high-society farce. A young prince seeks a bride of his own choosing, only to find that his heart and his political obligations are on a collision course.
The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Jr
Wallace Irwin
A satirical riff on the famous Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, this work imagines a long-lost son of the Persian poet living in Borneo, trading his father’s wine for a steady diet of tobacco and cynical observation.
Deborah Dent and Her Donkey and Madam Fig's Gala: Two Humorous Tales
Unknown
A whimsical pair of nineteenth-century cautionary tales, this collection uses rhythmic verse to explore the perils of social ambition and the absurdity of forcing one’s dreams upon unwilling companions.
The 4-D Doodler
Graph Waldeyer
A young man’s absent-minded sketches accidentally bridge the gap between our world and a higher, chaotic plane, bringing a terrifying, cosmic mimic into his laboratory. The result is a frantic struggle to survive a breach that threatens to turn the physical world inside out.
Unvarnished Tales
William Mackay
A grandly titled gentleman sells his father's stolen snuff-box back to him for a cool thousand pounds, only to discover that every domestic threshold conceals its own absurd, desperate blackmail scheme.
A Reversible Santa Claus
Meredith Nicholson
Stealing a stranger’s car on Christmas Eve seems simple enough for a retired pickpocket, until he realizes there is a laughing toddler in the back seat.
Beaumont and Fletcher's Works, Vol. 02 of 10: the Humourous Lieutenant
John Fletcher
A young prince fights for military glory while his royal father secretly plots to steal the woman he loves. In this classic seventeenth-century tragicomedy, courtly honor and raw desire collide on and off the battlefield.
Punchinello, Volume 1, No. 21, August 20, 1870
Various
This single issue of an Gilded-Age satirical magazine captures post-Civil War America in a whirlwind of literary parodies, slapstick rural humor, and sharp political caricature.
Is sex necessary?
James Thurber
Sex has become unnecessarily complicated, turning a simple biological impulse into an exhausting, paper-heavy obsession.
The Water Ghost and Others
John Kendrick Bangs
Every Christmas Eve, a spectral figure dripping with icy lake water materializes at Harrowby Hall to drench the current heir, initiating a sequence of absurd encounters between stubborn mortals and deeply practical ghosts.
Thursday Evening: A Comedy in One Act
Christopher Morley
A young married couple on the brink of domestic exhaustion lets a mountain of dirty dishes turn a quiet evening into a marital battlefield.
Mr. Punch in Wig and Gown: The Lighter Side of Bench and Bar
Unknown
Lawyers are often seen as solemn figures, but here they are stripped of their dignity through sharp satires and legal parodies.
Unborn Tomorrow
Mack Reynolds
A hungover detective takes on a strange client, only to discover that the only thing a man can bring back from the future is an agonizingly compounded hangover.
More E. K. Means: Is This a Title? It Is Not. It Is the Name of a Writer of Negro Stories, Who Has Made Himself So Completely the Writer of Negro Stories That This Second Book, Like the First, Needs No Title
E. K. (Eldred Kurtz) Means
A sleepy Louisiana hamlet becomes a stage where local white authority and an interconnected Black community test boundaries through comedic misunderstandings, runaway panics, and absurd schemes.
The Honeymoon: A comedy in three acts
Arnold Bennett
A newlywed English aviator and his charming bride find their quiet seaside escape shattered on their very first day of marriage when professional duty, overbearing parents, and an absurd legal mistake threaten their future together.
Elbow-Room: A Novel Without a Plot
Charles Heber Clark
This collection of sketches captures the absurd, low-stakes friction of small-town life, where absent-minded inventors and stubborn neighbors collide with hilarious, innocent persistence. It serves as a refreshing reminder that the happiest man is often the one who knows how to laugh at the nonsense of existence.
Fables for the Times
Henry Wallace Phillips
These irreverent, sharp-edged tales reimagine classic fables with a cynical, modern sensibility. They strip away moralizing artifice to reveal the chaotic, often absurd nature of human—and animal—ambition and vanity.
Sweet and Twenty: A Comedy in One Act
Floyd Dell
A pair of strangers accidentally fall in love, only to discover that their families have already orchestrated their union, forcing them to confront the suffocating, absurd reality of modern marriage.
Jiglets: A series of sidesplitting gyrations reeled off—
Walter Jones
A relentless vaudevillian narrator shares a series of disreputable, rapid-fire anecdotes about hard luck, bad actors, and the absurdities of early 20th-century American life.
Verse and Worse
Harry Graham
A journey through the absurdity of the human condition, where the only thing more reliable than a bad reputation is the certainty that the righteous are doomed to be bored.
Comical People
Unknown
A whimsical collection of tales set in a humanized animal kingdom, this work offers a satirical lens on the social anxieties and class hierarchies of mid-Victorian England. It captures the absurdity of status-seeking through the eyes of its anthropomorphic cast.
Steve Brown's Bunyip, and Other Stories
John Arthur Barry
The sea and the outback are not merely settings in these tales, but volatile characters that test the limits of human endurance, morality, and survival in the harsh, expansive landscape of nineteenth-century Australia.
The Dope on Mars
Jack Sharkey
HOOK A satirical diary of a space mission goes disastrously wrong when a cynical journalist and his crew accidentally trigger a planetary invasion. It is a cautionary tale about the perils of unchecked curiosity.
Advanced Chemistry
Jack G. Huekels
A scientist discovers an "immortal fluid" capable of reanimating the dead through electrical stimulation. This unsettling short story explores the thin line between scientific breakthrough and absolute catastrophe.
Samantha on Children's Rights
Marietta Holley
A sharp-witted rural matron turns her gaze toward the stifling conventions of child-rearing, offering a humorous, common-sense critique of how adults often fail the young by prioritizing vanity over genuine connection.
Make Mine Homogenized
Rick Raphael
A quiet Nevada ranch becomes the unlikely epicenter of the space race when a common Guernsey cow begins producing high-octane rocket fuel.
The Jewel Merchants: A Comedy in One Act
James Branch Cabell
In a sun-drenched Renaissance garden, a young woman’s romantic tryst with a traveling merchant is interrupted by a predatory duke. This is a sharp, elegant dance of power, ambition, and the unexpected price of integrity.
The Electric Man: Being the One Act Version of the Three Act Farcical Comedy of the Same Name
Charles Hannan
HOOK A frantic inventor tries to hide his failed mechanical double, only to have the automaton come to life and wreak havoc in a chaotic race to save his inheritance.
The Story of the Two Bulls
John R. (John Rogers) Bolles
A deacon’s hidden pride leads to a Sunday morning catastrophe when his obsession with livestock pits two rival bulls against each other, turning his home into a chaotic battlefield of shattered glass and broken furniture.
A Parody on Iolanthe
D. (Davison) Dalziel
A whimsical, brass-heavy satire that reframes the Victorian stage as a love letter to the Chicago & Alton Railroad, where industry and fairyland collide in an engine-room of corporate pride.
The Re-echo Club
Carolyn Wells
A witty collection of literary parodies, this book imagines famous poets reimagining the same trivial subjects, from a purple cow to a Cubist painting, with hilarious and often biting results.
![Cover of The Widow [To Say Nothing of the Man]](https://cdn.myebooksbuy.com/c/the-widow-to-say-nothing-of-the-man-helen-rowland.webp)
The Widow [To Say Nothing of the Man]
Helen Rowland
A cynical, witty exploration of courtship, marriage, and the eternal games played between men and women. This is a playful, sharp-tongued dialogue on the art of romantic manipulation.
Venus is a Man's World
William Tenn
A world run entirely by women sends a ship of hopeful brides to a rough, male-dominated frontier where men still hold the power.
A Parody on Patience
D. (Davison) Dalziel
A satirical, corporate-sponsored adaptation merges Gilbert and Sullivan’s popular operetta with brazen nineteenth-century railway advertising, turning Victorian aestheticism into a commercial for Midwestern train travel.
Punch, or the London Charivari, Volume 103, November 12, 1892
Various
A seaside resort in autumn becomes the backdrop for an awkward dance between a young woman evading her partner and a suitor outclassed by his own vanity.