My Discovery of England

This is a series of essays in which Stephen Leacock compares England with North America in order to find similarities and differences. He is doing this in a spirit of redressing the "balance of trade" in impressions; lots of English authors have come to North America to get impressions of it, but not many North Americans have done the same for England. In a historical context, it was interesting to read because it was published in 1922, and a few essays touched on the question of German reparations. It's weird as a 21st-century reader to read it and know that World War 2 will happen, but the audience at the time of the book has no idea.

Overall, the essays were easy to read, and I really liked the essay on different types of humour show more (although he and I disagree on the hilarity of the pun -- I love puns, whereas he does not think they are terribly funny, at least not on the level the English apparently find them). However, his essay on education (and visiting Oxford) had some very dated and sexist views on the value of women's education. Despite the fact that he taught coed classes at McGill, he didn't seem to think it worthwhile for the women to be there because the vast majority of them were just going to go and get married anyway. He does acknowledge that there are women who are able to make careers for themselves and not get married or have children, but he doesn't seem to think it wrong that they should have to give up the use of their education or their jobs when they get married. He also touches on the subject of different aptitudes, but he divides them along gender lines, assuming that women do worse at math and science, for example. I do realize that this perspective is a product of his times, but he went on about it for too long for me to just brush off.

I would NOT recommend the essay about Oxford, but the humour essay was all right, and the one where he writes the same editorial for several different newspapers was an interesting literary exercise. This is also not the book to be starting out with if you've never read Leacock -- go to Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town instead. show less

this is not Leacock's best work. It could be seen as from the American or Canadian point of view, pretty much a by-the-numbers put-down of the Brits. the chapter on pronunciation is the funniest.