Stephen Leacock is an unjustly forgotten master of the short-story genre who was considered the best-known humorist in the world in the early twentieth century. Although he was a prolific writer, publishing about fifty novels, memoirs and histories in his lifetime, Leacock was best known for the humorous articles he published in various magazines, which he later collected in Literary Lapses, Nonsense Novels and Frenzied Fiction.


One of his later works, Frenzied Fiction is a collection from a master of a genre at the height of his game, and contains all the hallmarks of his earlier work, written in the trademark style which he had refined over the previous two decades. Containing such gems as 'My Recollections as a Spy' and 'Simple Stories of Success, or How to Succeed in Life', this collection demonstrates why he met with such success and earned the respect of those as far removed as John Lane, A.P. Herbert and Groucho Marx.