Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town

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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. Leacock’s 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 Leacock’s 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 Canada’s most prolific writers, was also a charismatic public speaker, touring widely giving lectures and readings from his work. Leacock died in 1944 in Toronto.

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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.

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CONTENTS

Chronology

Suggested Further Reading

A Note on the Text

Preface

I The Hostelry of Mr. Smith

II The Speculations of Jefferson Thorpe

III The Marine Excursions of the Knights of Pythias

IV The Ministrations of the Rev. Mr. Drone

V The Whirlwind Campaign in Mariposa

VI The Beacon on the Hill

VII The Extraordinary Entanglement of Mr. Pupkin

VIII The Fore-Ordained Attachment of Zena Pepperleigh and Peter Pupkin

IX The Mariposa Bank Mystery

X The Great Election in Missinaba County

XI The Candidacy of Mr. Smith

XII L’Envoi. The Train to Mariposa

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 Toronto’s 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 teacher’s certificate at Strathroy Collegiate Institute in Western Ontario.