Literary Lapses (14 page)

 

THE AUTHOR

STEPHEN LEACOCK
was born in Swanmore, Hampshire, England, in
1869
. His family emigrated to Canada in
1876
and settled on a farm north of Toronto. Educated at Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto, Leacock pursued graduate studies in economics at the University of Chicago, where he studied under Thorstein Veblen.

Even before he completed his doctorate, Leacock accepted a position as sessional lecturer in political science and economics at McGill University. When he received his Ph.D. in
1903
, he was appointed to the full position of lecturer. From
1908
until his retirement in
1936
, he chaired the Department of Political Science and Economics.

Leacock's most profitable book was his textbook,
Elements of Political Science
, which was translated into seventeen languages. The author of nineteen books and countless articles on economics, history, and political science, Leacock turned to the writing of humour as his beloved avocation. His first collection of comic stories,
Literary Lapses
, appeared in
1910
, and from that time until his death he published a volume of humour almost every year.

Leacock also wrote popular biographies of his two favourite writers, Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. At the time of his death, he left four completed chapters of what was to have been his autobiography. These were published posthumously under the title
The Boy I Left Behind Me
.

 

 

Stephen Leacock died in Toronto, Ontario, in 1944.

 

BY STEPHEN LEACOCK

AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The Boy I Left Behind Me (
1946
)

 

BIOGRAPHY

Mark Twain (
1932
)

Charles Dickens: His Life and Work (
1933
)

 

DRAMA

‘Q': A Farce in One Act [with Basil Macdonald] (
1915
)

 

ECONOMICS

Economic Prosperity in the British Empire (
1930
)

Back to Prosperity: The Great Opportunity of the Empire Conference (
1932
)

The Gathering Financial Crisis in Canada: A Survey of the Present Critical Situation (
1936
)

 

EDUCATION

The Pursuit of Knowledge: A Discussion of Freedom and Compulsion in Education (
1934
)

Too Much College, or Education Eating Up Life (
1939
)

 

HISTORY

Baldwin, Lafontaine, Hincks: Responsible Government (
1907
)

Adventures of the Far North: A Chronicle of the Frozen Seas (
1914
)

The Dawn of Canadian History: A Chronicle of Aboriginal

Canada and the Coming of the White Man (
1914
)

The Mariner of St. Malo: A Chronicle of the Voyages of Jacques Cartier (
1914
)

Mackenzie, Baldwin, Lafontaine, Hincks (
1926
)

Lincoln Frees the Slaves (
1934
)

The British Empire: Its Structure, Its History, Its Strength (
1940
)

Canada: The Foundations of Its Future (
1941
)

Our Heritage of Liberty: Its Origin, Its Achievement, Its Crisis:

A Book for War Time (
1942
)

Montreal: Seaport and City (
1942
)

Canada and the Sea (
1944
)

 

HUMOUR

Literary Lapses (
1910
)

Nonsense Novels (
1911
)

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (
1912
)

Behind the Beyond, and Other Contributions to Human Knowledge (
1913
)

Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (
1914
)

Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy (
1915
)

Further Foolishness: Sketches and Satires on the Follies of the Day (
1916
)

Frenzied Fiction (
1918
)

The Hohenzollerns in America; with the Bolsheviks in Berlin, and Other Impossibilities (
1919
)

Winsome Winnie, and Other New Nonsense Novels (
1920
)

My Discovery of England (
1922
)

College Days (
1923
)

Over the Footlights (
1923
)

The Garden of Folly (
1924
)

Winnowed Wisdom (
1926
)

Short Circuits (
1928
)

The Iron Man and the Tin Woman, with Other Such Futurities (
1929
)

Wet Wit and Dry Humour: Distilled from the Pages of Stephen Leacock (
1931
)

The Dry Pickwick and Other Incongruities (
1932
)

Afternoons in Utopia: Tales of the New Time (
1932
)

Hellements of Hickonomics in Hiccoughs of Verse Done in Our Social Planning Mill (
1936
)

Funny Pieces: A Book of Random Sketches (
1936
)

Here Are My Lectures (
1937
)

Model Memoirs, and Other Sketches from Simple to Serious (
1938
)

My Remarkable Uncle and Other Sketches (
1942
)

Happy Stories Just to Laugh At (
1943
)

Last Leaves (
1945
)

 

LITERARY CRITICISM

Essays and Literary Studies (
1916
)

Humour: Its Theory and Technique (
1935
)

The Greatest Pages of American Humor (
1936
)

Humour and Humanity: An Introduction to the Study of Humour (
1937
)

How to Write (
1943
)

 

POLITICAL SCIENCE

Elements of Political Science (
1906
)

The Unsolved Riddle of Social Justice (
1920
)

My Discovery of the West: A Discussion of East and West in Canada (
1937
)

While There Is Time: The Case Against Social Catastrophe (
1945
)

 

Copyright © Canada 1910, 1957 by McClelland and Stewart Limited
Afterword copyright ©
1957
by Robertson Davies

First New Canadian Library edition 1957.
This New Canadian Library edition 2008.

All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher–or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency–is an infringement of the copyright law.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Leacock, Stephen,
1869-1944.

Literary lapses / Stephen Leacock; with an afterword by Robertson Davies.

(New Canadian library)
Originally published: Montreal : Gazette Print. Co. , 1910.
e
ISBN
: 978-1-55199-183-2

I. Title. II. Series.

PS8523.E15L5 2008    C813'.52    C2007-906488-4

We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation's Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

McClelland & Stewart Ltd.
75
Sherbourne Street
Toronto, Ontario
M5A 2P9
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