We rely on your support to help us keep producing beautiful, free, and unrestricted editions of literature for the digital age. Will you support our efforts with a donation ? Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town is Stephen Leacock's humourous and affectionate account of small-town life in the fictional town of Mariposa. Written in 1912, it is drawn from his experiences living in Orillia, Ontario. The book is a series of funny and satirical anecdotes that illustrate the inner workings of life in Mariposa—from business to politics to steamboat disasters. The town is populated by many archetypal characters including the shrewd businessman Mr. Smith, the lovelorn bank teller Mr. Pupkin, and the mathematically challenged Rev. Mr. Drone. During his lifetime, Stephen Leacock was very popular in much of the English-speaking world as a writer and humourist. Sunshine Sketches is considered one of his most notable and enduring works. In Canada, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour is named in his honour. The medal is an annual award for the best Canadian book of literary humour published in the previous year. Stephen Leacock (died 1944) was an influential writer of the modernist period. Their work has endured across generations and continues to be read and studied worldwide. As a work of classic literary fiction, Sunshine Sketches Of A Little Town exemplifies the narrative craft and social insight that defined great storytelling of its era. Literary fiction of this period was characterized by careful attention to character psychology, social milieu, and the moral questions that animated public discourse.
