Leacock, Stephen Butler

Related Category: English Canadian Literature: Biographies

1869–1944, Canadian economist and humorist, b. England, grad. Univ. of Toronto (B.A., 1891), Univ. of Chicago (Ph.D., 1903). Head of the department of political science and economics (1908–36) at McGill Univ., he wrote standard works in his own field, in Canadian history, and in biography. He is best remembered, however, for his many volumes of humorous essays and stories, many of them genial satires, including Literary Lapses (1910), Nonsense Novels (1911), Behind the Beyond (1913), Frenzied Fiction (1918), Winnowed Wisdom (1926), My Discovery of the West (1937), and How to Write (1942). Last Leaves (1945) are posthumously published essays.

See his autobiographical fragment, The Boy I Left behind Me (1946).