Great Satire

The art of the savage joke — Swift’s Modest Proposal, Voltaire’s Candide, Twain, and Bierce, who used comedy to tell the cruelest truths.

Laughter with a knife in it

In this collection

Showing 120 works from the first 120 entries in this collection.

• At the Feast of Lanterns
• At Bethany
• Lucerne
• The Wind-Gnome
• The Scales of Justice
• The Adventure of William Hicks
• The Committee on Public Morals
• To Marcus
• The Way to the Dairy
• The Americans
• The Battle of the Strong, Volume 5
• Ave a 'Eart!
• Unc' Edinburg
• Ancient History
• The Twelve Apostles (Children's Legends)
• Jikininki
• The Badger
• The Bush Undertaker
• Life in the Eagle's Nest
• The Foster Lover
• Eau-Forte (F. S. Flint)
• The Story of a Bad Boy
• Unforgotten
• Lines on a Typewriter
• A Bubble Reputation
• A Martyr to Conscience
• A Point of Law
• His Client's Case
• The Breeches Bishop
• The Jade Button
• The Difficulties of the Peacemakers
• C'est Une Taupe
• O Tibbie, I Hae Seen the Day
• Epitaph on James Grieve, Laird of Boghead, Tarbolton
• Ballad on the American War
• Epistle to John Rankine
• O Leave Novels
• Epitaph on a Noisy Polemic
• Epitaph on a Henpecked Country Squire
• Epigram on the Said Occasion
• One Queen Artemisia, as Old Stories Tell
• Epitaph on John Rankine
• The Twa Herds; or, the Holy Tulyie
• Holy Willie's Prayer
• Epitaph on Holy Willie
• Death and Doctor Hornbook
• Epistle to John Goldie, in Kilmarnock
• The Holy Fair
• Epistle to the Rev. John M'Math
• Epitaph for James Smith
• Adam Armour's Prayer
• The Jolly Beggars: a Cantata
• The Twa Dogs
• The Author's Earnest Cry and Prayer
• The Ordination
• Address to the Unco Guid, or the Rigidly Righteous
• The Inventory
• To a Louse, on Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet, at Church
• To Gavin Hamilton, Esq., Mauchline, Recommending a Boy
• Address of Beelzebub
• A Dream
• A Dedication to Gavin Hamilton, Esq
• Stanzas on Naething
• The Calf
• Reply to a Trimming Epistle Received from a Tailor
• The Brigs of Ayr
• Lines on Meeting with Lord Daer
• Address to a Haggis
• Extempore in the Court of Session
• Written by Somebody on the Window of an Inn at Stirling
• The Fete Champetre
• Epistle to Robert Graham, Esq., of Fintry
• The Poet's Progress
• Elegy on the Year 1788
• The Henpecked Husband
• Ode, Sacred to the Memory of Mrs. Oswald of Auchencruive
• Ode on the Departed Regency Bill
• A New Psalm for the Chapel of Kilmarnock
• Sketch in Verse, Inscribed to the Right Hon. C. J. Fox
• Carle, an the King Come
• The Laddie's Dear Sel'
• On the Late Captain Grose's Peregrinations Thro' Scotland
• Epigram on Francis Grose the Antiquary
• The Kirk of Scotland's Alarm
• The Battle of Sherramuir
• Awa' Whigs, Awa'
• The Five Carlins
• Election Ballad for Westerha'
• Lines to a Gentleman
• Elegy on Willie Nicol's Mare
• I Murder Hate
• Election Ballad at the Close of the Contest for Representing the Dumfries Burghs
• On Glenriddell's Fox Breaking his Chain
• Second Epistle to Robert Graham, Esq., of Fintry
• The Toadeater
• The True Loyal Natives
• Thanksgiving for a National Victory
• Kirk and State Excisemen
• Impromptu on General Dumourier's Desertion from the French Republican Army
• Epigrams against the Earl of Galloway
• Monody on a Lady Famed for her Caprice
• Epistle from Esopus to Maria
• The Dean of Faculty
• Friar Lubin
• Smelling Essays
• Peter Bell the Third
• Oedipus Tyrannus; or, Swellfoot the Tyrant
• Similes for Two Political Characters of 1819
• Lines to a Reviewer
• Verses on a Cat
• Here I Sit with my Paper, my Pen and my Ink
• The Devil's Walk
• Soliloquy of the Spanish Cloister
• The Heretic's Tragedy
• Mr. Sludge, "the Medium"
• Of Pacchiarotto, and how he Worked in Distemper
• Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial
• Tray
• The Pope and the Net
• Arcades Ambo

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