Humor Classics

Jane Austen skewers the novelistic extremes of her day made popular in many 18th-century Gothic potboilers. Dilapidated castles, locked rooms, inexplicable chests, enigmatic notes, and tyrannical fathers all figure into Northanger Abbey, but with a decidedly sardonic twist.

Containing drafts of stories later rewritten for other collections (including Carry On, Jeeves), My Man Jeeves offers a fascinating insight into the genesis of comic literature’s most celebrated double-act. All the stories are set in New York, four of them featuring Jeeves and Wooster themselves; the rest concerning Reggie Pepper, an earlier version of Bertie.

Maurice has just killed a dragon with a bread knife. And had his destiny foretold…and had his true love spirited away. That's precisely the sort of stuff that'd bring out the latent heroism in anyone. Unfortunately, Maurice is pretty sure he hasn't got any latent heroism. Meanwhile, a man wakes up in a jar in a different kind of pickle (figuratively speaking). He can't get out, of course, but neither can he remember his name, or what gravity is, or what those things on the ends of his legs are called…and every time he starts working it all out, someone makes him forget again.

Set in the 1920s, The Glimpses of the Moon details the romantic misadventures of Nick Lansing and Susy Branch, a couple with the right connections but not much in the way of funds. They devise a shrewd bargain: they'll marry and spend a year or so sponging off their wealthy friends, honeymooning in their mansions and villas.

Adam cannot understand Eve - her penchant for naming everything in the garden irks him, as does her boundless curiosity, but he learns, in time, that he cannot live happily without her. And Eve finds that she loves Adam above all things.

The Diaries of Adam and Eve is Twain's humorous take on the myth of the Garden of Eden, as told by the participants. The joys and conflicts described will be familiar to all who labor with and love the opposite sex.

Gogol's phantasmagorical tale about a man whose nose decides to abscond and begin living a life of its own is one of the earliest and most celebrated examples of absurdist literature. Apart from its recondite humor, it is remarkable for Gogol's skill in characterization and his ability to paint a picture of contemporary life in Russia in a few verbal brushstrokes.

Hear Dickens' gift for social commentary in this classic story of the poor orphan, Oliver. In this time-tested classic, Dickens aimed to expose the filth of the London underworld as well as attack the inhumanity of the New Poor Law of 1834. This audiobook is a stunning performance by the award-winning Miriam Margolyes, who is considered one of the most knowledgeable and brilliant actors and interpreters of Dickens.

Two wealthy gentlemen decide to give a poor stranger a million-pound bank note to see what he will do with it. The results are very unexpected.

Produced by Sydney Lotterby of Yes Minister and Porridge fame. Each instalment featured a mixture of sketches (some foreshadowing Bennett's subsequent television dramas, others mocking television clichés, such as documentaries about working-class Northern writers and discussion programmes featuring pretentious critics). This is a never before broadcast compilation of sketches and extracts from the TV series before the tapes where wiped.

Plucky and romantic Alice tries to rise above the crudities of her hopelessly shabby background in this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic about ambition and self-delusion. The lower-middle class Adams family faces a slow disintegration in a small Midwestern town. Alice, a social climber, is ashamed of her unsuccessful family and determined to distinguish herself.

An Ideal Husband is an 1895 comedic stage play by Oscar Wilde which revolves around blackmail and political corruption, and touches on the themes of public and private honor. The action is set in London, in "the present", and takes place over the course of 24 hours. Together with The Importance of Being Earnest, it is often considered Wilde's dramatic masterpiece. After The Importance of Being Earnest, it is his most popularly produced play. Performed by Michael Ward.

Young, wealthy Arabella is obsessed with French romances: brought up by a reclusive widowed father in an isolated castle, she has educated herself through their pages, and been led to believe that their dramas and absurdities are reality. She blindly adheres to their example and interprets her everyday life through their lens, thinking that life consists of uncontrollable passions and murderous violence, and that any man would die for her. Thus she embarks on a series of hilarious misadventures, insistent on the reality of her imaginary world, like Don Quixote before her.

If the name seems familiar, these tales about Darby O'Gill and his encounter with the fairies were adapted for a Disney movie, Darby O'Gill and the Little People. They tell the story of an Irishman whose cow is captured by the fairies - or "good people". In his determination to recover his property, Darby finds himself in the center of their home, the mountain Sleive-na-mon.

Raised by vampyre relatives, Jane grows to resent the lifestyle's effect on her upbringing. No sunlight, nighttime hours, and a diet of bloody red meat is no way for a mortal girl to live. Things change for Jane when the ghost of her uncle visits her, imparts her parents' slayer history, and charges her with the responsibility of striking out to find others of her kind and learn the slayer ways.

Adam had a fine life. He had all the food he wanted, a fine garden to live in, and miles and miles of peace and quiet. Until one day, a woman entered his life. And amongst her other garrulous qualities, she says that his beautiful garden doesn't really look like a garden at all. She thinks it looks more like a park.

John Harmon returns from exile expecting to receive an inheritance, but knows that he must marry a stranger, Bella Wilfer, in order to collect. He fakes his own death and takes on a new identity in order to observe her first. Some of the memorable characters in this, the last completed Dickens novel, include Bella who, unlike other Dickens heroines, cannot be accused of unnatural virtue; the insolent barrister Eugene Wrayburn; the amiable Boffin; and the rascal Silas Wegg.

Thomas wanted a simple, stable existence, but saddled with unemployment, an absentee girlfriend, and the impending unpaid rent, change is hurtling down on him whether he likes it or not. Following the sudden murder of his strange elderly neighbor, he awakens on the wrong side of the Veil transformed into a mountain lion, and thrust into a dangerous world of magic.

Octave Mirbeau donne la parole à Célestine, une chambrière, qui perçoit le monde par le trou de la serrure et ne laisse rien échapper des "bosses morales" de ses maîtres. Le lecteur pénètre au cœur de la réalité cachée de la société, dans les arrière-boutiques des nantis, dans les coulisses du théâtre du "beau" monde. Octave Mirbeau arrache le masque de respectabilité des puissants, fouille dans leur linge sale, débusque les crapuleries camouflées derrière les manières et les grimaces avantageuses.

O. Henry wove several stories together into this highly episodic narrative, taking his title and inspiration from Lewis Carroll's ballad of the walrus and the carpenter in Through the Looking-Glass. The stories are set in the fictional country of Anchuria in Central America, a banana republic where larceny is rampant and revolution lurking in every impoverished back alley. O. Henry offers a cutting satire of contemporary politics and prejudices.