Laughter Therapy: 63 Classic Books of Humorous Tales
A Transatlantic Treasury of Satire, Absurd Fantasy, Farce, and Classic Comic TalesBy Ellis Parker Butler, Honoré de Balzac, Mark Twain, John Kendrick Bangs, Thorne Smith, Robert Fitzgerald, Harry Leon Wilson, H. C. Witwer, F. Anstey, S. R. Crockett, Marietta Holley, Sewell Ford, A. S. M. Hutchinson, Anne Warner, Dornford Yates, Charles Heber Clark, Rudolf Erich Raspe, Finley Peter Dunne, Robert W. Chambers, W. W. Jacobs, F. Morton Howard, Richard Marsh, H. H. Sir Bashford, J. Storer Clouston, O. Henry, Charles Battell Loomis, E. F. Benson, Anita Loos, Wallace Irvin, Lawrence Daniel Fogg, Terry Southern, Henry Wallace Phillips, George V. Hobart, Stephen Leacock, Daisy Ashford, W. A. Darlington, Kendell Foster Crossen, Israel Zangwill, Ring Lardner, Charles Eustace Merriman, Wallace Irwin, Howard Roger Garis, W. Heath Robinson, Lucretia P. Hale, Richmal Crompton, Peter Newell
Length356h 32m
About this audiobook
Laughter Therapy gathers sixty-three classic books of humorous tales into a capacious archive of comic invention, ranging from tall tales, farce, parody, and social satire to domestic comedy, absurdist fantasy, and the gently anarchic children's story. Its selections illuminate humor's power to expose pretension, soften misfortune, and recast everyday life as an arena of surprise. Fantastic adventures, deadpan hoaxes, comic misunderstandings, and sharply observed portraits of provincial, urban, and transatlantic society give the volume both historical breadth and sustained entertainment. The contributors represent an unusually wide Anglo-American and European lineage, joining nineteenth-century humorists with twentieth-century practitioners of modern satire. Their varied careers—in journalism, popular fiction, children's literature, theatrical comedy, and literary experiment—bring together vernacular wit, caricature, linguistic play, and institutional critique. The anthology consequently traces important currents in comic writing: the tall-tale tradition, Victorian nonsense and burlesque, the social comedy of manners, and the American idioms of regionalism and magazine fiction. Across these voices, laughter becomes not merely diversion but a cultural instrument for testing class, gender, authority, respectability, and national myth. Recommended for students, scholars, and general readers alike, Laughter Therapy offers the rare opportunity to encounter a broad comic tradition within one volume. Its multiplicity of styles rewards both sustained study and casual browsing, while the juxtapositions among tales foster a lively dialogue about what humor can reveal. Readers will find an educative, expansive, and genuinely delightful survey of literary laughter.
Audiobook details
GenreHumor, General Fiction
Length356 hrs 32 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateMar 4, 2025
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1The Adventures of a Suburbanite
2I. THE PRAWLEYS
3V. THE NEW MR. PRAWLEY
4VII. CHESTERFIELD WHITING
5X. ADVANCED GOLF
Show all chaptersShow less
6Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Chapters 31 to 35
7HUCKLEBERRY FINN
8Josiah Allen's Wife as a P. A. and P. I
9JOSIAH ALLEN’S WIFE AS A P. A. P. I. SAMANTHA AT THE CENTENNIAL. DESIGNED AS A BRIGHT AND SHINING LIGHT, TO PIERCE THE FOGS OF ERROR AND INJUSTICE THAT SURROUND SOCIETY AND JOSIAH, AND TO BRING MORE CLEARLY TO VIEW THE PATH THAT LEADS STRAIGHT ON TO VIRTUE AND HAPPINESS.
10MY REASONS TO THE KIND AND ALMOST GENTLE READER WHY I DON’T HAVE NO PREFACE TO THIS BOOK.
11WHAT I HAVE WRIT ABOUT.
12WHAT THE KIND ARTIST HAS DONE
13THE JONESVILLE DEBATIN’-SCHOOL.
14THE WIDDER DOODLE.
15A DEBATE ON INTEMPERANCE.
16TIRZAH ANN AS A WIFE.
17P. A. AND P. I.
18HOW I WENT TO ’LECTION.
19HOW WE BOUGHT A SEWIN’ MACHINE AND ORGAN.
20PREPARIN’ FOR OUR TOWER.
21THE WIDDER AND WIDOWER.
22HOW SEREPTA CARRIED THE MEETIN’ HOUSE.
23A VISIT TO PHILANDER SPICER’SES FOLKS.
24MELANKTON SPICER AND HIS FAMILY.
25UNCLE ZEBULIN COFFIN
26THE GRAND EXHIBITION.
27DOIN’ THE MAIN BUILDIN’.
28WIDDER DOODLE AS A BRIDE.
29THE ARTEMUS GALLERY.
30VARIOUS MATTERS.
31ANOTHER DAY ON THE GROUNDS.
32THE REUNION.
33Josiah Allen on the Woman Question (pt. 1)
34Josiah Allen on the Woman Question (pt. 2)
35The Adventures of a Modest Man
36The Adventures of a Modest Man
37CHAPTER I
38CHAPTER III
39CHAPTER V
40CHAPTER VIII
41CHAPTER XII
42CHAPTER XV
43CHAPTER XVIII
44CHAPTER XXI
45CHAPTER XXIV
46The £1,000,000 bank-note, and other new stories
47The £1,000,000 bank-note, and other new stories
48MENTAL TELEGRAPHY
49A CURE FOR THE BLUES
50THE CURIOUS BOOK
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