Free summaries
Humour — page 6
633 public-domain humour books, summarised. Page 6 of 14.
Sam, This Is You
Murray Leinster
This tale of a small-town lineman who discovers a way to talk to himself across time is a clever, lighthearted exploration of the dangers and rewards of knowing one’s own future. It is a quintessential mid-century science fiction puzzle story that balances domestic comedy with the metaphysical ironies of a time-loop.
The Business, As Usual
Jack Sharkey
A teddy bear is sent on a high-stakes mission behind the Iron Curtain to wage a psychological war that ultimately backfires in the most absurdly human way possible.
The Funny Bone: Short Stories and Amusing Anecdotes for a Dull Hour
Unknown
The smallest spark of nonsense often provides the brightest light during the longest, most tedious hours. A collection of wit is best measured not by its gravity, but by its capacity to puncture the mundane.
A Journey of a Jayhawker
W. Y. (William Yoast) Morgan
The world is large, yet its people are remarkably familiar; a Kansas journalist discovers that whether one is in Paris, Rome, or London, the human experience remains stubbornly, comfortingly the same.
Mr. Punch in the Highlands
Unknown
The Highlands are a rugged landscape where nature is relentless, the weather is rarely dry, and the local wit is as sharp and unpredictable as the mountain mist.
Carols of Cockayne: The Third Edition, 1874
Henry S. (Henry Sambrooke) Leigh
This collection of verse captures the wry, observational spirit of mid-Victorian London, offering a witty look at the daily absurdities of urban life. It is a portrait of a society balancing its romantic sensibilities against the encroaching realities of trains, bills, and the inevitable passage of time.
The Stolen Heiress
Susanna Centlivre
A young couple defies a rigid father and a mercenary suitor in this spirited comedy, where mistaken identities and secret noble lineages collide before the clock runs out on a death sentence.
School-Room Humour
T. J. (Thomas James) Macnamara
Childhood innocence collides hilariously with rigid schoolroom lessons in a work that turns classroom blunders into pure comedy.
The wizard of light
David Ely
A senile optics genius sets out to destroy the art market by creating a machine that duplicates famous masterpieces down to the exact molecule.
Fables of Field and Staff
James A. (James Albert) Frye
A group of volunteer soldiers preserves the spirit of their regiment through tall tales and shared memories, finding camaraderie in the quiet spaces between peace-time drills and the lingering ghosts of a past war.
The A B C of Drag Hunting
Grace Clarke Newton
An abecedarian satire of early twentieth-century equestrian culture, this verse collection captures the mishaps, social rivalries, and financial perils that await anyone brave or foolish enough to join a drag hunt.
The Lunarian Professor and His Remarkable Revelations Concerning the Earth, the Moon and Mars: Together with An Account of the Cruise of the Sally Ann
James B. (James Bradun) Alexander
A traveler encounters an otherworldly visitor whose advanced civilization offers a radical, if detached, critique of humanity’s social, economic, and moral shortcomings.
Married Life: A Comedy, in Three Acts
John Baldwin Buckstone
Five mismatched couples grapple with jealousy, miscommunication, and the absurdity of their own domestic expectations in this lively 1834 farce.
Rattle OK
Harry Warner
A drunken office party leads employees to use a time machine to fulfill an eighty-year-old department store order, triggering a chaotic ripple effect that threatens both the past and the future.
The Best Nonsense Verses
Unknown
The world is a far more elastic place than logic allows, and these verses prove that the most sensible thing one can do is abandon reason for a rhyme.
Absurd Ditties
G. E. (George Edward) Farrow
This collection of light-hearted verse offers a series of playful, satirical vignettes that poke fun at the manners and preoccupations of Edwardian-era society. These "ditties" operate as whimsical character studies, where the absurd and the mundane collide with rhythmic, often humorous, consequences.
Double or Nothing
Jack Sharkey
This inventive short story explores the consequences of unchecked technological ambition when a brilliant but erratic engineer and his pragmatic assistant accidentally create a machine that spirals out of control.
More Misrepresentative Men
Harry Graham
HOOK This collection of witty, irreverent biographical sketches turns a sharp eye on historical figures and cultural icons, pairing mockery with a playful, rhythmic command of verse.
Captain Chaos
Nelson S. Bond
A space-faring patrol ship, desperate to fulfill a crucial wartime mission to Callisto, hires a mysterious, piping-voiced cook whose presence aboard quickly turns their routine blockade-run into a chaotic, high-stakes battle for survival.
"Swat the Fly!": A One-Act Fantasy
Eleanor Gates
The life-and-death struggle against disease is distilled into a simple, urgent plea in this fantasy play. It asks whether humanity’s fight for survival justifies the suffering of the creatures held in our labs.
A Vision of Venus
Harry Pleon
A bumbling barber’s night of intoxication triggers a supernatural entanglement when a museum-grade statue of Venus comes to life. This brief, rowdy farce captures the chaotic spirit of late 19th-century British popular theater.
Course of Empire
Richard Wilson
The reach of human ambition often exceeds our grasp, leading us to build grand structures atop foundations of ignorance. When Earth finally attempts to colonize the solar system, it discovers that colonial rule is a fragile, arrogant vanity.
Mop Fair
Arthur M. (Arthur Morris) Binstead
This collection of epistolary sketches captures the frantic, fashionable, and fundamentally absurd lives of London’s high-society denizens at the dawn of the twentieth century. It is a cynical, witty, and deeply gossipy chronicle of a world obsessed with appearances and prone to impulsive, ruinous romantic…
Odds and ends
B. M. (Bithia Mary) Croker
These stories capture the fleeting, often startling intersections of colonial life, where a chance encounter on a ship or a quiet moment in a bungalow can irrevocably alter a person's fortune.
Short Cruises
W. W. (William Wymark) Jacobs
In a landscape of muddy dockyards, quiet country inns, and cluttered parlor rooms, ordinary people scheme for modest advantage and invariably pull their own ground out from under themselves.
Skookum Chuck Fables: Bits of History, Through the Microscope
R. D. (Robert Dalziel) Cumming
A dry, sardonic eye peers through the damp mists of British Columbia to document the foibles of pioneers, rogues, and ordinary dreamers struggling for a foothold.
The Deacon: An Original Comedy Drama in Five Acts
Horace C. Dale
This play follows the classic tradition of nineteenth-century melodrama, blending farce, moral redemption, and the unraveling of dark secrets. Its enduring appeal lies in its earnest, high-stakes simplicity and a cast of archetypes that feel distinctly of their time.
The Quiet Hotel: A Farcical Sketch in One Act
Frank Dumont
HOOK A weary actress checks into a supposedly restful country inn, only to find the staff desperate for their own shot at theatrical stardom.
The Silver Shield: An Original Comedy in Three Acts
Sydney Grundy
A misunderstanding over a misinterpreted letter tears a marriage apart, leaving a husband and wife to live in separate worlds until a shared acquaintance helps them look at the other side of the shield.
Points of Humour, Part 2 (of 2)
Unknown
This collection of wit and anecdote offers a sharp, often cynical window into the social comedies and minor follies of the early nineteenth century. It serves as a historical repository of the ridiculous, where pride is consistently punctured by the pricks of circumstance.
Familiar Faces
Harry Graham
This collection of satirical verse captures the archetypes of early 20th-century English life, lampooning the manners, vices, and pretensions of the era with sharp wit and a cynical eye. It serves as a lively, biting tour through a social landscape populated by figures who remain as recognizable today as they were…
Joe Carson's Weapon
James R. Adams
Joe Carson believes he has a secret weapon capable of destroying the world, but he is merely a teenager boasting in a fan letter to a science-fiction magazine. Two Martian scouts, however, take his claim literally, setting in motion a bizarre and hilarious comedy of errors.
Mr. Meek Plays Polo
Clifford D. Simak
A timid bookkeeper finds himself drafted into a high-stakes space polo match, only to discover that his ship is being piloted by a swarm of hyper-intelligent, metal-eating rock bugs.
Retief of the Red-Tape Mountain
Keith Laumer
HOOK A rogue diplomat arrives on a war-torn planet with orders to follow a rigid, bureaucratic plan, only to discard the rulebook in favor of a brawl and some quick-witted negotiation.
The Castle of Andalusia: A Comic Opera, in Three Acts
John O'Keeffe
A lighthearted, whirlwind farce of mistaken identities and forest banditry, this story centers on a chaotic night where servants play at nobility and noblemen stumble into unexpected romances.
Death and Taxes
H. A. Hartzell
When a struggling painter faces eviction, his only allies are a boisterous ghost and a collection of supernatural misfits who finally prove that the afterlife has a sense of humor.
My Man Sandy
James Bell Salmond
A local eccentric and his long-suffering wife navigate the small, daily absurdities of life in a Scottish coastal town. These vignettes capture the charm of a man who lives by his own inexplicable internal logic.
Oh! Susannah!: A Farcical Comedy in Three Acts
Mark Ambient
A young doctor’s attempt to launch his practice descends into a frantic, dizzying series of misunderstandings when his secret bride and a meddlesome aunt arrive on the same afternoon.
A message from Mars
Richard Ganthony
A man who cherishes nothing but his own comfort discovers that the universe, or at least a visitor from Mars, demands much more of him.
Welsh Rarebit Tales
Harle Oren Cummins
HOOK Born of a literary club’s reckless experiment in late-night indulgence, these macabre tales capture the fevered, surreal nightmares of minds rattled by heavy dining and dark, speculative invention.
Tales from "Blackwood," Volume 4
Various
This collection gathers a variety of Victorian-era voices, blending political satire, theatrical farce, and personal tragedy into a singular, mid-nineteenth-century literary landscape. It captures the social anxieties and professional pretensions of the time through prose and verse that remain remarkably sharp.
The Harlequinade: An Excursion
Dion Clayton Calthrop
A whimsical invitation to step away from the rigidity of modern life, this excursion traces the enduring journey of the Harlequinade from ancient myth to the mechanical present.
The silica gel pseudomorph, and other stories
Edward Hart
A collection of whimsical tall tales, chemical oddities, historical vignettes, and small-town American romances bound together by a scientist's wry humor and affection for storytelling.
The Songs of a Sentimental Bloke
C. J. (Clarence James) Dennis
Disillusioned with his street-corner existence, a working-class Australian youth falls in love, trades his old vices for quiet domesticity, and discovers unexpected joy in fatherhood.
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.
Pen Pal
Stephen Marlowe
A thirty-three-year-old romantic hunts for her ideal husband through magazine personal ads, only to discover that the fascinating world traveler she pursues is quite literally not of this Earth.
Terrible Tractoration, and Other Poems
Thomas Green Fessenden
A scathing early American satire dons the mask of an arrogant physician to wage comedic war against medical monopolies, crackpot natural philosophy, and mob violence. <Image alt="Caricature of a 19th-century doctor using metallic tractors on a patient's face" caption="19th-century satire on metallic tractor…
The Man from Home
Booth Tarkington
The American lawyer, Daniel Voorhees Pike, arrives at a swanky Italian hotel to rescue his ward from a predatory European marriage. Beneath the wit of his blunt, small-town charm lies an unyielding resolve that forces a clash of cultures and class.