Stephen Leacock (1869-1944) wrote 60-odd books, most collections of magazine pieces of humourous fiction, literary essays, and articles on social issues, politics, economics, science, and history. Having grown up near Lake Simcoe, Ontario, Leacock attended Upper Canada College, the University of Toronto, and the University of Chicago, then taught all his life at McGill University. "Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town" (1912) and "Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich" (1914) are his masterpieces.

"CHEER UP, EVERYBODY." With these words and the following note Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich was introduced by its publisher to readers of the November 18, 1914 issue of The New York Times Book Review: Stephen Leacock is a humorist who puts big ideas into satire and fun. These delicious adventures take us into the realm of financiers, American clubmen and clubwomen, and the magnificent homes of the wealthy, and literally bubble over with wit and farcical satire. A week later (and perhaps at Leacock´s request) the last phrase of this advertisement was changed to "good-natured fun," and a week later again, Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich was included among the Review´s "Two Hundred Leading Books of the Season," where it was "classed with" Leacock´s Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, and credited with "great clearness . . . the utmost good nature" and an "apparently . . . spontaneous" manner of bringing out "the humor of personalities and incidents . . . ." None of these qualities has diminished in their appeal or effectiveness and none of the targets of Leacock´s "farcical satire" and "good-natured fun" has either disappeared or become less needful of critique: Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich is as funny and pertinent today as it was in 1914. So long as there is a "realm of financiers," Leacock´s humour will remain a "delicious" reminder of what is truly valuable in life.

Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town began life in the "Montreal Star" in the first half of 1912 as a commissioned series of sketches about Canadian life, and is the only book Leacock wrote specifically for his Canadian readership. The Sketches holds in Canada a status comparable to Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn in American culture. Even the titles suggest much about differences between the two nations. Twain's nineteenth century classic focuses on the alienated individual, the ingenuous outsider who tells his own story and serves as his author's mouthpiece for satirizing the community. Leacock's Sunshine Sketches speaks from inside the typical Canadian town of Mariposa, is coloured throughout by a more sophisticated humour, and ironically champions the values of the community. Huckleberry Finn ends with its hero lighting out for what becomes in American mythology the vanishing frontier; Sunshine Sketches ends with an aborted attempt to re-enter Mariposa. The last chapter of the Sketches powerfully suggests, however, that what is of value in Mariposa must be remembered and imaginatively retrieved if there is to be a full and integrated life in the present and hope for the future - of Canada and Canadians. The following writers contribute to this critical edition of Leacock's masterpiece, Alan Bowker, Douglas Bush, Silver Donald Cameron, Robertson Davies, James Doyle, Arthur Lower, Gerald Lynch, William H. Magee, Peter McArthur, Darrel A. Norris, Desmond Pacey, B.K. Sandwell, and R.E. Watters.