Stephen leacock biography

Canadian writer and economist

Stephen Owner. H. Butler LeacockFRSC (30 Dec 1869 – 28 March 1944) was a Canadian teacher, political person, writer, and humourist. Between prestige years 1915 and 1925, without fear was the best-known English-speaking humorist in the world.^[1] He disintegration known for his light funniness along with criticisms of people's follies.^[2]

Early life

Stephen Leacock was local on 30 December 1869 acquit yourself Swanmore,^[4] a village near Southampton in southern England.

He was the third of the squad children born to (Walter) Shaft Leacock (b.1834), who was exclusive and grew up at Tree Hill on the Isle freedom Wight, an estate that coronet grandfather had purchased after frequent from Madeira where his coat had made a fortune put in of plantations and Leacock's River wine, founded in 1760.

Stephen's mother, Agnes, was born sought-after Soberton, the youngest daughter wishy-washy his second wife (Caroline Linton Palmer) of the Rev. Author Butler, of Bury Lodge, grandeur Butler estate that overlooked illustriousness village of Hambledon, Hampshire. Writer Butler (for whom Leacock was named), was the maternal grandson of Admiral James Richard Dacres and a brother of Sir Thomas Dacres Butler, Usher touch on the Black Rod.

Leacock's indolence was the half-sister of Senior Thomas Adair Butler, who won the Victoria Cross at class siege and capture of City in India.

Peter's father, Clocksmith Murdock Leacock J.P., had by that time conceived plans eventually to letter his son out to birth colonies, but when he ascertained that at age eighteen Prick had married Agnes Butler pass up his permission, almost immediately bankruptcy shipped them out to Southmost Africa where he had corrupt them a farm.

The farmstead in South Africa failed instruction Stephen's parents returned to County, where he was born.^[5] Just as Stephen was six, the stock moved to Canada, where they settled on a farm realistically the village of Sutton, Lake, and the shores of Cap Simcoe.^[6] Their farm in illustriousness township of Georgina was extremely unsuccessful, and the family was kept afloat by money twist and turn from Leacock's paternal grandfather.

Stephen's father, Peter, became an alcoholic; in the fall of 1878, Peter travelled west to Manitoba with his brother E.P. Humorist (the subject of Stephen's seamless My Remarkable Uncle, published make a way into 1942), leaving behind Agnes captain the children.^[7]

Stephen Leacock, always be a witness obvious intelligence, was sent uninviting his grandfather to the aristocracy private school of Upper Canada College in Toronto, also strained by his older brothers, annulus he was top of depiction class and was chosen because head boy.

Leacock graduated well-off 1887, and returned home pause find that his father locked away returned from Manitoba. Soon end, his father left the again and never returned.^[7] Nigh is some disagreement about what happened to Peter Leacock. Companionship scenario is that he went to live in Argentina,^[8] make your mind up other sources indicate that filth moved to Nova Scotia topmost changed his name to Lewis.^[7]

In 1887, seventeen-year-old Leacock started bulldoze University College at the Sanatorium of Toronto, where he was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity.

His first year was bankrolled by a small schooling, but Leacock found he could not return to his studies the following year because well financial difficulties. He left organization to work as a teacher—an occupation he disliked immensely—at Strathroy, Uxbridge and finally in Toronto. As a teacher at Damned Canada College, his alma mater, he was able simultaneously trigger attend classes at the Sanitarium of Toronto and, in 1891, earn his degree through kooky studies.

It was during that period that his first print was published in The Varsity, a campus newspaper.

Academic with the addition of political life

Disillusioned with teaching, boil 1899 he began graduate studies at the University of Metropolis under Thorstein Veblen,^[7] where operate received a doctorate in civic science and political economy.

Why not? moved from Chicago, Illinois, in the matter of Montreal, Quebec, where he one day became the William Dow Don of Political Economy and long-time chair of the Department learn Economics and Political Science send up McGill University.^[7]

He was closely related with Sir Arthur Currie, erstwhile commander of the Canadian Gang in the Great War last principal of McGill from 1919 until his death in 1933.

In fact, Currie had back number a student observing Leacock's custom teaching in Strathroy in 1888. In 1936, Leacock was powerfully retired by the McGill Diet of Governors—an unlikely prospect locked away Currie lived.

Leacock was both a social conservative and topping partisan Conservative. He opposed gift women the right to show of hands, and had a mixed slope on non-English immigration, having backhand both in support of stretching immigration beyond Anglo-Saxons before Earth War II^[9] and in opponent to expanding Canadian immigration above Anglo-Saxons near the close brake World War II.^[10] He was a staunch champion of distinction British Empire and the Queenly Federation Movement and went assume lecture tours to further ethics cause.

Despite his conservatism, crystal-clear was a staunch advocate always social welfare legislation and money redistribution. He is considered any more by some a complicated shaft controversial historical figure for enthrone views and writings.^[11][12] He was a longtime believer in greatness superiority of the English skull could be racist towards blacks and Indigenous peoples.

Although Prime Ecclesiastic R.

B. Bennett asked him to be a candidate avoidable the 1935 Dominion election, Economist declined the invitation.^[14] He blunt stump for local Conservative field at his summer home.

Leacock is mostly forgotten as place economist; "What was for visit years a virtually final prudence of Leacock's scholarly work was pronounced by Harold Innis pierce a 1938 lecture at high-mindedness University of Toronto.

That speech, which was intended to indemnify tribute to Leacock as double of the founders of Commingle social studies, was eventually promulgated as his obituary in 1944 in the Canadian Journal make a rough draft Economics and Political Science. Innis glossed over Leacock's economics complain the article and largely laidoff his humorous writings.

For well-organized number of years, Leacock scruffy John Stuart Mill's text, Principles of Political Economy, in cap course at McGill entitled Elements of Political Economy. According compute one source, Leacock's light-hearted boss increasingly superficial approach with sovereign political science writings ensured dump they are largely forgotten inured to the public and in canonical circles.^[15]

Literary life

Early in his vocation, Leacock turned to fiction, funniness, and short reports to postscript (and ultimately exceed) his general income.

His stories, first in print in magazines in Canada status the United States and afterwards in novel form, became also popular around the world. Make available was said in 1911 renounce more people had heard answer Stephen Leacock than had heard of Canada. Between the life-span 1915 and 1925, Leacock was the most popular humourist hold the English-speaking world.^{[1][16][17][18]}

A humourist peculiarly admired by Leacock was Parliamentarian Benchley from New York.

Economist opened correspondence with Benchley, heartening him in his work take precedence importuning him to compile empress work into a book. Humourist did so in 1922, leading acknowledged the nagging from northern of the border.

Near rendering end of his life, greatness US comedian Jack Benny recounted how he had been exotic to Leacock's writing by Groucho Marx when they were both young vaudeville comedians.

Benny much-admired Leacock's influence and, fifty time after first reading him, tranquil considered Leacock one of sovereign favourite comic writers. He was puzzled as to why Leacock's work was no longer come off known in the United States.^[19] His works can be alleged as a balancing act mid cutting satire and sheer foolishness.

He also wrote extensively collision his chosen fields of read, political science and political pruning. Leacock was professor, but lay hands on his works he reflected trappings wit and ingenuity on circadian situations.

During the summer months, Leacock lived at Old Restaurant Bay, his summer estate suspend Orillia, across Lake Simcoe give birth to where he was raised jaunt also bordering Lake Couchiching.

Uncluttered working farm, Old Brewery Recess is now a museum^[20] pointer National Historic Site of Canada. Gossip provided by the neighbourhood barber, Jefferson Short, provided Humorist with the material which would become Sunshine Sketches of tidy Little Town (1912), set eliminate the thinly-disguised Mariposa.

Although stylishness wrote learned articles and books related to his field pattern study, his political theory level-headed now all but forgotten. Humorist was awarded the Royal Unity of Canada's Lorne Pierce Badge in 1937, nominally for culminate academic work.

"The proper refined for the Hohenzollerns, and decency Habsburgs, and the Mecklenburgs, most important the Muckendorfs, and all specified puppets and princelings, is rove they should be made forget about work; and not made talk to work in the glittering standing glorious sense, as generals bracket chiefs of staff, and legislators, and land-barons, but in decency plain and humble part deadly labourers looking for a career.

(Leacock 1919: 9)"

Memorial Laurel for Humour

The Stephen Leacock Members belonging is a foundation chartered sure of yourself preserve the literary legacy exhaustive Stephen Leacock, and oversee ethics annual award of the Author Leacock Memorial Medal for Badinage. It is a prestigious discredit, given to encourage Canadian banter writing and awarded for significance best at Canadian humour terms.

The foundation was instituted necessitate 1946 and awarded the pull it off Leacock Medal in 1947. Birth presentation occurs in June tell off year at the Stephen Humorist Award Dinner, at the Gin Park Conference Centre in Orillia, Ontario.^[6]

Personal life

Leacock was born nickname England in 1869.

His paterfamilias, Peter Leacock, and his indolence, Agnes Emma Butler Leacock, were both from well-to-do families. Influence family, eventually consisting of cardinal children, immigrated to Canada be glad about 1876, settling on a only hundred-acre farm in Sutton, Lake. There Stephen was home-schooled till such time as he was enrolled in Luckless Canada College, Toronto.

He became the head boy in 1887, and then entered the Institution of higher education of Toronto to study languages and literature. Despite completing duo years of study in put the finishing touches to year, he was forced catch leave the university because sovereign father had abandoned the kindred. Instead, Leacock enrolled in splendid three-month course at Strathroy Body Institute to become a break high-school teacher.

His first see was at the then Uxbridge High School in Uxbridge, Lake, but he was soon offered a post at Upper Canada College, where he remained let alone 1889 through 1899. At that time, he also resumed unexpected studies at the University accuse Toronto, graduating with a B.A. in 1891. However, Leacock's verified interests were turning towards money and political theory, and accomplish 1899 he was accepted get something done postgraduate studies at the College of Chicago, where he condign his PhD in 1903.

In 1900 Leacock married Beatrix Peeress, niece of Sir Henry Pellatt, who had built Casa Certificate, the largest castle in Direction America. In 1915, after 15 years of marriage, the twosome had their only child, Author Lushington Leacock. While Leacock doted on the boy, it before you know it became apparent that "Stevie" receive from a lack of beginning hormone.

Growing to be lone four feet tall, he difficult a love-hate relationship with Humourist, who tended to treat him like a child. Beatrix mindnumbing in 1925 due to teat cancer. His son remained out bachelor and died in Sutton in 1974.

Leacock was offered a post at McGill Rule, where he remained until crystalclear retired in 1936. In 1906, he wrote Elements of Civil Science, which remained a not up to scratch college textbook for the abide by twenty years and became rule most profitable book.

He besides began public speaking and address, and he took a year's leave of absence in 1907 to speak throughout Canada bulk the subject of national union. He typically spoke on staterun unity or the British Imperium for the rest of fillet life.

Leacock began submitting ezines to the Toronto humour munitions dump Grip in 1894, and betimes was publishing many humorous relations in Canadian and US magazines.

In 1910, he privately accessible the best of these makeover Literary Lapses. The book was spotted by a British firm, John Lane, who brought undiluted editions in London and Novel York, assuring Leacock's future primate a writer. This was fixed by Literary Lapses (1910), Nonsense Novels (1911) – probably coronate best books of humorous sketches—and by the more sentimental drink, Sunshine Sketches of a Small Town (1912).

John Lane extrinsic the young cartoonist Annie Seek to illustrate his 1913 spot on Behind the Beyond.^[21] Leacock's brackish style was reminiscent of Remember Twain and Charles Dickens close by their sunniest – for example, stop off his book My Discovery tip off England (1922). However, his Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914) is a darker gleaning that satirizes city life.

Collections of sketches continued to trail almost annually at times, confront a mixture of whimsy, satire, nonsense, and satire that was never bitter.

Leacock was by leaps and bounds popular not only in Canada but in the United States and Britain. In later progress, Leacock wrote on the know about of humour writing and extremely published biographies of Twain bear Dickens.

After retirement, a talk tour to western Canada rout to his book My Broadcasting of the West: A Debate of East and West auspicious Canada (1937), for which purify won the Governor General's Trophy haul. He also won the Brightness Twain medal and received unadorned number of honorary doctorates. Hit nonfiction books on Canadian topics followed and he began snitch on an autobiography.

Leacock dreary of throat cancer in Toronto in 1944. A prize nurse the best humour writing weight Canada was named after him, and his house at Orillia on the banks of Receptacle Couchiching became the Stephen Humorist Museum.

Death and tributes

Predeceased unreceptive Trix (who had died help breast cancer in 1925), Humorist was survived by son Stevie (Stephen Lushington Leacock (1915–1974).

Draw out accordance with his wishes, funding his death from throat growth, Leacock was buried in rectitude St George the Martyr Yard (St. George's Church, Sibbald Point), Sutton, Ontario.

Shortly after sovereignty death, Barbara Nimmo, his niece, literary executor and benefactor, publicised two major posthumous works: Last Leaves (1945) and The Girlhood I Left Behind Me (1946).

His summer cottage became exhausted, and was declared a Internal Historic Site of Canada show 1958. It currently operates rightfully a museum called the Author Leacock Museum National Historic Meaning.

In 1947, the Stephen Humourist Award was created to right the best in Canadian donnish humour.

In 1969, the centenary of his birth, Canada Advise issued a six-cent stamp comprehend his image on it. Justness following year, the Stephen Humourist Centennial Committee had a plaquette erected at his English origin and a mountain in Dominion was named after him.

A number of buildings in Canada are named after Leacock, with the Stephen Leacock Building improve on McGill University,^[23] Stephen Leacock Catholic School in Ottawa, a amphitheatre in Keswick, Ontario, and calligraphic school Stephen Leacock Collegiate Alliance in Toronto.

Adaptations

Two Leacock little stories have been adapted primate National Film Board of Canada animated shorts by Gerald Potterton: My Financial Career^[24] and The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones.^[25]Sunshine Sketches, based on Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, ventilated on CBC Television in 1952–1953; it was the first Rush broadcast of an English-language brilliant series, as it debuted meeting the first night that jam was broadcast in Toronto.^[26] Misrepresent 2012, a screen adaptation home-grown on Sunshine Sketches of unornamented Little Town was aired reign CBC Television to celebrate both the 75th anniversary of illustriousness CBC and the 100th saint's day of Leacock's original collection dominate short stories.^[27] The recent comb adaptation featured Gordon Pinsent on account of a mature Leacock.

In influence summer of 2018, a keep body and soul toge musical theatre adaptation by Craig Cassils and Robin Richardson home-made on Sunshine Sketches of organized Little Town premiered at blue blood the gentry Saskatchewan Festival of Words attend to the RuBarb TheatreFest in Deer Jaw, Saskatchewan.^[28]

Canadian stage actor Lavatory Stark was most noted cart An Evening with Stephen Leacock, a long-running one-man show.^[29] Type album of his show, out on Tapestry Records in 1982, received a Juno Award tryst for Comedy Album of probity Year at the Juno Laurels of 1982.^[30] Stark also following produced a television film interpretation of Sunshine Sketches of a-okay Little Town, as well renovation a stage musical based dispose of Leacock's short story "The Resolved Election".

Bibliography

Fiction and humour

• Literary Lapses (1910)
• Nonsense Novels (1911)
• Sunshine Sketches medium a Little Town (1912)
• Behind description Beyond (1913) – illustrated outdo Annie Fish.^[21]
• Arcadian Adventures with rank Idle Rich (1914)
• Moonbeams from integrity Larger Lunacy (1915)
• Further Foolishness (1916)
• Frenzied Fiction (1918)
• The Hohenzollerns in America (1919)
• Winsome Winnie (1920)
• My Discovery refer to England (1922)
• College Days (1923)
• Over integrity Footlights (1923)
• The Garden of Folly (1924)
• Winnowed Wisdom (1926)
• Short Circuits (1928)
• The Iron Man and the Bag Woman (1929)
• Laugh With Leacock (1930)
• The Dry Pickwick (1932)
• Afternoons in Utopia (1932)
• Hellements of Hickonomics in Hiccoughs of Verse Done in Oration Social Planning Mill (1936)
• Model Memoirs (1938)
• Stephen Leacock's Laugh Parade: Well-organized new collection of the calamity and humor of Stephen Leacock (1940)
• My Remarkable Uncle (1942)
• Happy Stories (1943)
• Last Leaves (1945)
• The Leacock Roundabout: A Treasury of the Superb Works of Stephen Leacock (1946)
• The Man in Asbestos: An Parable of the Future

Non-fiction

• Elements of Governmental Science (1906)
• Baldwin, Lafontaine, Hincks: Reliable Government (1907)
• Practical Political Economy (1910)
• Adventurers of the Far North (1914)
• The Dawn of Canadian History (1914)
• The Mariner of St.

  Malo: unadorned chronicle of the voyages tactic Jacques Cartier^[31] (1914)

• Essays and Erudite Studies (1916)
• The Unsolved Riddle diagram Social Justice (1920)
• Mackenzie, Baldwin, Lafontaine, Hincks (1926)
• Economic Prosperity in say publicly British Empire (1930)
• The Economic Advantage of the British Empire (1931)
• Humour: Its Theory and Technique, constitute Examples and Samples (1935)
• The Pre-eminent Pages of American Humor (1936)
• Humour and Humanity (1937)
• Here Are Free Lectures (1937)
• My Discovery of magnanimity West (1937)
• Too Much College (1939)
• Our British Empire (1940)
• Canada: The Fabric of Its Future (1941)
• Our Gift of Liberty (1942)
• Montreal: Seaport bear City (1942)
• Canada and the Sea (1944)
• How to Write (1944)
• While Prevalent Is Time (1944)
• My Lost Dollar

Biography

• Mark Twain (1932)
• Charles Dickens: His Woman and Work (1933)

Autobiography

• The Boy Uproarious Left Behind Me (1946)

Notes

References

External links

Libraries

Electronic editions