The story of three men taking a meandering trip down the River Thames was based on Jerome and his friends. The novel is beautifully observed, full of quirky incidents and laugh-out-loud passages, especially the section ‘Cheese as a Travelling Companion’.
The Devil’s Dictionary remains one of the best satirical non-fiction books ever written. Bierce originally titled his dictionary The Cynic’s Word Book and his sardonic, playful definitions laid bare hypocrisy.
Czech writer Hašek, who died of heart failure at 39, created a comic Everyman with the hapless World War One soldier who battles bureaucracy.
It is a subversive, witty story about teenage orphan Flora Poste, who stays in Sussex with the doomed Starkadders.
P.G. Wodehouse remains to many the most celebrated comic novelist of the 20th century. There were 96 Wodehouse books published in the Guildford-born author’s lifetime, and Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was still working on a story when he died in 1975 at the age of 93.
With Evelyn Waugh, readers are spoilt for choice, because his novels Vile Bodies, Black Mischief, The Loved One, and Decline and Fall, all fizz with waggish genius. However, we’ve gone for Scoop, a cracking satire about the world of newspapers.
Dorothy Parker was a trailblazing Jazz Age humourist who purveyed her jocularity in short stories, poems, screenplays, and criticism.