Stephen Leacock

Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich Stephen Leacock

Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich is a collection of humorous interwoven vignettes by Stephen Leacock, published in 1914. It exists as a companion work to his Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), due to the similarity of composition, and their subject matter. Arcadian Adventures follows the members of the 'Mausoleum Club' on Plutoria Avenue, in an unnamed American city (usually referred to as Plutoria, after its main street), and pokes fun at their obsessive individualism and materialism. As Leacock thought humour to be 'the kindly contemplation of the incongruities of life and the artistic expression thereof', Acardian Adventures tends to steer slightly away from this form of 'kindliness', and, thus, ranks as one of his most scathing works, as well as arguably one of his funniest. At the time of publication, Arcadian Adventures became extremely popular in North America, and, for a while, was considered a greater success than Sunshine Sketches. It was also translated and published by the Bolshevik government soon after the 1917 revolution, and it became a bestseller in the Soviet Union. Stories A Little Dinner with Mr. Lucullus Fyshe The Wizard of Finance The Arrested Philanthropy of Mr. Tomlinson The Yahi-Bahi Oriental Society of Mrs. Rasselyer-Brown The Love Story of Mr. Peter Spillikins The Rival Churches of St. Asaph and St. Osoph The Ministrations of the Rev. Uttermust Dumfarthing The Great Fight for Clean GovernmentStephen P. H. Butler Leacock, FRSC (30 December 1869