Stephen Leacock - Sunshine Sketches Of A Little Town (Penguin Classics)

PENGUIN CLASSICS

SUNSHINE SKETCHES OF A LITTLE TOWN

STEPHEN BUTLER LEACOCK was born in Swanmore, Hampshire, England, in 1869. When he was six his family emigrated to Canada, settling on a farm near Sutton, Ontario, south of Lake Simcoe. Leacock was educated at Upper Canada College and the University of Toronto. He received a Ph.D. in political economy from the University of Chicago in 1903, and thereafter became a professor of economics and political science at McGill University in Montreal, where he would teach until his retirement. In 1900 he married Beatrix Hamilton, an aspiring actress; their son, Stephen Lushington, was born in 1915. Leacocks first book, Elements of Political Science, became a standard university text and was his bestselling book during his lifetime. He wrote several books on economics, politics, and history, among which are The Unsolved Riddle of Social Injustice, Canada: The Foundations of Its Future, and While There Is Time: The Case Against Social Catastrophe. He also wrote biographies of Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. But Leacocks lasting fame would come from his comic writings. His first, Literary Lapses, is a compilation of magazine pieces; it was a great success and paved the way for the many books that followed, including Nonsense Novels, Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich, Frenzied Fiction, Winsome Winnie and Other New Nonsense Novels, My Discovery of England, and Too Much College. The work for which he is best known, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, was published in 1912. Leacock, one of Canadas most prolific writers, was also a charismatic public speaker, touring widely giving lectures and readings from his work. Leacock died in 1944 in Toronto.

WILL FERGUSONs debut novel, Happiness, has been published in thirty-three countries and twenty-six languages around the world. It was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (Canada and the Caribbean: First Novel) and went on to win the Leacock Medal for Humour and the Canadian Authors Association Award for Fiction. With his brother Ian, he wrote the wildly successful humour book How to Be a Canadian, which won the CBA Libris Award for Non-fiction Book of the Year. Wills travel memoir Beauty Tips from Moose Jaw was an immediate bestseller and won Ferguson his second Leacock Medal for Humour. His most recent book is Hitching Rides with Buddha: A Journey Across Japan. Ferguson lives in Calgary with his wife and their two young sons.

STEPHEN LEACOCK

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

With an Introduction by

WILL FERGUSON

PENGUIN CANADA

Published by the Penguin Group

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Penguin Classics edition copyright Penguin Group (Canada), 2006.

This edition is an unabridged reprint of the first Canadian edition of Sunshine Sketches, published in 1912 by Bell and Cockburn.

Introduction copyright Will Ferguson, 2006

Painting of Stephen Leacock on page vi by Cyrus Cuneo. Courtesy the Stephen Leacock Museum.

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Publishers note: This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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ISBN-10: 0-670-06508-0

ISBN-13: 978-0-670-06508-0

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Contents

Stephen Leacock, as painted by Cyrus Cuneo, 1912

Chronology

1869 Stephen Butler Leacock is born on December 30 in Swanmore, Hampshire, England, the third of an eventual eleven children.

1876 The Leacock family moves to Canada and settles on a farm near the south shore of Lake Simcoe, Ontario.

1882 Leacock enrolls in Torontos Upper Canada College.

1887 His father, Peter, abandons the family. Leacock enters the University of Toronto, where he studies literature and modern and classical languages. He completes two years in one.

1888 Leacock is obliged to leave university for financial reasons, and goes on to obtain a teachers certificate at Strathroy Collegiate Institute in Western Ontario. He begins teaching modern languages at Uxbridge High School.

1889 Becomes language master at Upper Canada College, where hell teach for ten years, until July 1899. Meanwhile, he returns to university to study part time.

1891 Receives his honours B.A. from the University of Toronto.

1894 His first comic writing is published in Grip, a Toronto humour magazine.

1899 Begins graduate work at the University of Chicago in economics and political science, studying under Thorstein Veblen.

1900 Appointed sessional lecturer in political science at McGill University. On August 7 he marries Beatrix Hamilton in New York City.

1903 Receives a Ph.D. in political economy, and is appointed a full-time assistant professor in economics and political science at McGill.

1906 Publication of his first book, Elements of Political Science.

1907 Leacock embarks on a speaking tour of the British Empire to promote imperial unity. His book Baldwin, Lafontaine, Hincks: Responsible Government is published.

1908 Buys thirty-three acres of waterfront property on Lake Couchiching near Orillia, Ontario, which he dubs Old Brewery Bay. Appointed William Dow Professor of Political Economy and chairman of the Department of Economics and Political Science at McGill Universitya position hell hold until his retirement almost thirty years later.