My Discovery of England

by Stephen Leacock

Stephen Butler Leacock (1869 -1944) was a Canadian writer and economist. Leacock, always of obvious intelligence, was sent to the elite private school of Upper Canada College in Toronto, where he was top of the class and so popular he was chosen as head boy. Early in his career Leacock turned to fiction, humour, and short reports to supplement and ultimately exceed his regular income. His stories, first published in magazines in Canada and the United States and later in novel form became extremely popular around the world. It was said in 1911 that more people had heard of Stephen Leacock than had heard of Canada. Although he wrote learned articles and books related to his field of study, his political theory is now all but forgotten. Leacock was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1937, nominally for his academic work.

Genres: British Literature, Nonfiction, Comedy

116 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Stephen P. H. Butler Leacock, FRSC, was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humorist. Between the years 1915 and 1925, he was the best-known English-speaking humorist in the world. He is known for his light humour along with criticisms of people's follies. The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour was named in his honour.

Wikipedia article.

Reviews

[Julian Worker · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a humorous book and the sense of fun and wit has lasted well, given the book was published 100 years ago.

Mr Leacock provides his impressions of British humour, business, the city of London, the government and newspapers of the time, as well as the essay on why Oxford University is pre-eminent amongst the seats of higher learning in the world - it's down to the ivy-clad walls, tutors blowing smoke into the faces of the students at tutorials, and meals being prepared in kitchens dating from the time of Henry VIII.

Mr Leacock was born in England before moving to Canada as a child and his genial humour and irony show that some of his wit does come from the land of his birth.

[Jasmine · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was published in 1922, and since it deals with Current Culture and Affairs, it's a bit like looking into a time machine.

Mr. Leacock published this volume of his impressions of the British Isles after going on a humorous lecture tour there, and he covers Prohibition, Education, Publishing, Capitalism and Humour, among others, in very amusing fashion. I read some of this aloud, and it is even more dryly hilarious when spoken.

I can't say I agreed with all of his views. The suggestion that women not be educated made me glower just a bit, for example. (But I'm willing to take that as opinion from a different time and move on, since his descriptions of traveling made me chortle out loud.) Worth reading just for the descriptions of traveling and education, as well as prohibition.

[Colin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a soft spot for very old humour. This book is largely out of date in its view of england and the topics of the day (women in academia, for example) but surprisingly, a lot of its observations still ring true.
He is unsound on puns.

[Viktor · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very dry humor and interesting to read Leacock on serious topics.

He does not bash women herein as some reviews have insisted, rather he is against co-educating them, ie, schooling them alongside men.

[Timothy Ferguson · Rating 2 out of 5]

Layton's book involves him travelling to England, from his native Canada, and writing in the slightly patronising and earnestly parochial way that English writers favoured while touring North America. His description of English people coming to mine, and then sell, their impressions of America is terribly funny if, like me, you’ve enjoyed works in this genre. I can see his ghost hovering behind Stephen Fry, chiding him for daring to take impressions of America and sell them, which Leacock’s narrator sees as little better than thievery.

Leacock’s description of London shows his intent for the rest of the work. It describes Nelson’s Column only as the best way to find the American barbershop nearby, and the Tower of London basically as a way to find the American gasoline station slightly to its north. It reminded me most of Rick Steve suggesting you could do the British Museum in two hours. Leacock also does a lovely line in the fact that English people do not seem to travel anywhere or see anything, so his narrator, in attempting to experience England in a truly English way, manages to avoid seeing the British Museum, the Tower of London, or Westminster Abbey, but finds this no social impediment, as no-one he meets has actually seen them either. It is sufficient, for conversational purposes, to memorise a few glib clichés about each place.

Sadly, in the middle of this book is a real clanger of a chapter, in which he, well, I’m not sure what he’s doing. Let me argue by analogy. I watched Benny Hill once. The joke seemed to be that women wear underwear. I could not actually understand the structure of the jokes on Benny Hill because the concept is that you’ll be sort of shocked and titillated by underwear and I’m not either. I mean, people turn up in my library in bikinis on a pretty regular basis in summer and I don’t even notice unless they’ve forgotten to wear shoes, on which we sometimes insist. Similarly, I don’t understand what Leacock thinks he’s doing in his lengthy bit of pointless writing. Leacock knows it is pointless and that women have won. Is he trying to tweak the nose of the contemporary version of political correctness? It’s a painfully bad chapter, if you are seeking humor. If you’d like to hear a “separate but equal” argument from the time, as a gender study, then it may have some value to you.

This review was first posted on book coasters

[Susan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun book. Certain chapters held my attention more than others, but it was a happy read. He is so droll, so under the radar in his humour that time passes quickly. Add a half to that last star!

[Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great fun, until he started bashing women, with no hint of satire in sight.

[Jennifer · Rating 2 out of 5]

I started out loving this light hearted travelogue from the 1920s; in the first few chapters Leacock’s observations on the differences between England and the US/Canada were charming and brought frequent smiles to my face. But then I read the chapter about higher education - in which he spends most of it arguing against higher education for women - and suddenly it was both not funny and offensive. And yes, you could chalk up his attitude as a reflection of his time, but even for the 1920s this felt dated and reactionary. But I plowed on, no longer enjoying his observations quite as much… and then got to a chapter where he discusses the post WW1 economic depression in terms of “people just not wanting to work and being too soft” etc etc. And again, this is both not humorous in a work that starts out as light reading and too reminiscent of political discourse in the present that I don’t agree with. So in the end, I was disappointed in this. My initial impression that Leacock was the equivalent of Bill Bryson was wrong; though at times funny, he veers too often onto non-funny soapboxes.

[Hal Brodsky · Rating 2 out of 5]

A few good lines, but very dated, not funny by today's standards (and not as funny as Leacock's other work). One chapter is more or less an Ayn Rand rant (Leacock was also an "Political Scientist") with no attempt at humor (and BTW, with 20/20 hindsight Leacock turned out to be wrong: He argues in this book that the only way out of the Great Depression was by the Government not being involved at all; specifically no social safety net, no jobs programs, etc).

[Anna Tjepkema · Rating 4 out of 5]

Set in 1921 he tours around England lecturing. His thoughts on "darkies" and why women shouldn't be allowed in Universities.

[Bablu]

skip the misogo parts and it's a slightly interesting bunch of period vignettes