Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich
A group of wealthy Americans in a fictional city pursue culture, charity and social advantage with complete seriousness and no understanding of what they are doing. Leacock wrote it as a companion to Sunshine Sketches, but the tone is sharper and the target is the idle rich rather than a small town.
The chapters are linked episodes, each built around a scheme that goes wrong. The satire is broad, but the details are precise: committees, endowments, visiting lecturers. It is a useful reminder that Leacock was not merely avuncular; he could be quite cold about money.
Public-domain status
First published in 1914. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Stephen Leacock died in 1944, so this work has been free to republish there since 2015.
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