Frenzied Fiction

Stephen Leacock

From Shelf: Humour

Stephen Leacock is an unjustly forgotten master of the short-story genre, once considered the best-known humorist in the world. Although he was a prolific writer, publishing about fifty novels, memoirs and histories in his lifetime, he was best known for his story short-collections Literary Lapses, Nonsense Novels and Frenzied Fiction.

Stephen Leacock is an unjustly neglected master of the short-story genre, once considered the best-known humorist in the world. Although he was a prolific writer, producing about fifty novels, biographies and histories, he was best known for his humorous articles and short stories in magazines. One of his later collections, Frenzied Fiction shows a master of a genre at the height of his game, and contains all the hallmarks of his earlier work and the trademark wit which he had refined over the previous decades. By turns laugh-aloud hilarious and poignant, and containing such gems as 'My Recollections as a Spy' and 'Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life', this collection builds a strong case against prohibition, paints a moving picture of a war-torn world, caricatures and lampoons novelists, actors and princes, and demonstrates why he met with such success and stacked a fan base with figures as varied John Lane, A.P. Herbert and Groucho Marx.