Stephen Butler Leacock (1869-1944)

• writer and economist
• born in Swanmore, England, and taken to Canada at age six
• family settled on a farm a few miles south of Lake Simcoe, near the town of Sutton, Ontario
• his father soon abandoned the family
• his mother managed to send him to school at Upper Canada College
• won a scholarship to the University of Toronto
• taught at Upper Canada College (1889-1899)
• went to graduate school at the University of Chicago
• taught at McGill University (1908-1936) where he was head of the Department of Economics and Political Science
• wrote more than sixty books including works on political science and economics and biographies of Mark Twain (1932) and Charles Dickens (1933)
• best known for his essays, parodies, and short stories
• humourous works include:
  • Literary Lapses (1910)
  • Nonsense Novels (1911)
  • Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912)
  • Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich (1914)
  • Moonbeams from the Larger Lunacy (1915)
  • My Remarkable Uncle (1942)
• Biographies:
  • Faces of Leacock (1967) by Donald Cameron,
  • Stephen Leacock (1970) by Robertson Davies
  • Stephen Leacock: A Reappraisal (1987) by D. Staines
• Stephen Leacock Museum
• more information

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