The following book is a collection of essays written by Samuel Butler. He was an English novelist and critic, best known for the satirical utopian novel 'Erewhon' and the semi-autobiographical novel 'The Way of All Flesh'. The book also serves as an introduction to Butler's life in general. Featured essays in this book include 'The Humour of Homer', 'Ramblings in Cheapside', and 'The Aunt, the Nieces, and the Dog'.

Samuel Butler was regarded as an expert on ancient Greek literature, and several of his translations of texts from the period remain authoritative and continue to be used by scholars and students. This diverse collection brings together a number of essays, sketches, short stories and other pieces that offer a comprehensive introduction to Butler's incisive and engaging style.

First published in 1939, the original blurb reads: We have learned much lately concerning theories of laughter, yet laughter is only what we do about comedy. What is comedy itself? In this work the history of comic instances is combed in the search for the truth about comedy. Today, when laughter is stifled in so many countries, an exposition of comedy shows it to have a universal and necessary character. Comedy, as its natures reveals, is one criterion of the state of human culture; it is highly contemporary and requires freedom – but freedom for adventure, not for routine. After a chapter devoted to the explanation of a logical theory of comedy, the modern comedians are examined, and the humour of every one, from the Marx Brothers to surrealism, from Gertrude Stein to Mickey Mouse, from James Joyce to Charlie Chaplin, is shown to be a constant, inherent in the same set of unchanging conditions.