Comedy Web Novels

Comedy web novels with public chapters on NovelCult.

A Tangled Tale

In the late 19th century, Lewis Carroll —better known these days as the author of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland —was also an established mathematician who had published many books and papers in the fields of algebra and logic. His mathematical interest extended to the setting of puzzles for popular consumption. The stories collected here cover varied subjects including the cataloguing of paintings, the number of times trains will pass each other on a circular track, the most efficient way to rent individual rooms on a square, and many more.

Lewis Carroll · Comedy · 14 ch

The Expedition of Humphry Clinker

Told entirely in letters, a Welsh family and their servants bicker, court, and blunder their way through the spas and cities of Georgian Britain. A comedy of manners written from inside the mailbag.

Tobias Smollett · Adventure · 84 ch

The Adventures of Roderick Random

A young Scotsman with no fortune ships out as a surgeon's mate and endures press-gangs, quacks, and rogues across sea and land. A rough, funny adventure about making one's way in an unforgiving world.

Tobias Smollett · Adventure · 71 ch

Looking Backward

In Looking Backward, well-to-do Julian West of Boston falls asleep for 113 years and awakes to find the world of 2000 fundamentally changed. An old man and his daughter care for him and take him on a tour of the new world. In the new society, a single nationalized corporation-state under a single political party guarantees work, comfort, and luxury to everyone in the “industrial army.” Looking Backward is a watershed utopian novel following in the path laid by books like Thomas More’s Utopia, Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World, and Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s The Year 2440.

Edward Bellamy · Sci Fi · 29 ch

Kipps

Kipps is the story of Arthur “Artie” Kipps, an illegitimate orphan raised by his aunt and uncle on the southern coast of England in the town of New Romney. Kipps falls in love with neighbor friend Ann Pornick but soon loses touch with her as he begins an apprenticeship at a drapery establishment in the port town of Folkestone. After a drunken evening with his new friend Chitterlow, an aspiring playwright, Kipps discovers he is to inherit a house and sizable income from his grandfather.

H. G. Wells · Comedy · 20 ch

Manalive

A man of unusually large stature and dexterity arrives at a boardinghouse on the wind—literally—while its unsuspecting lodgers look on in shock. The man, Innocent Smith, performs comic, eccentric, and dastardly acts which are examined and put to trial by the residents and renowned experts. Lawyers on both sides of the question of Innocent Smith’s guilt bring revelatory correspondence to the trial.

G. K. Chesterton · Comedy · 10 ch

Erewhon Revisited

Higgs has made his fortune with sales of his original travelogue Erewhon. When his wife dies, his long-held desire to return to the country overwhelms him, and even his friends agree that a change of scenery would be a good idea. Soon after his departure he returns back home to England unexpectedly early and deeply unwell, and so it’s down to his son John to piece together what happened during his fleeting visit to Erewhon.

Samuel Butler · Comedy · 29 ch

The Adventures of Ferdinand Count Fathom

A cold-blooded adventurer schemes, swindles, and seduces his way across Europe without a shred of remorse. A dark early novel about a villain told entirely from the villain's side of the table.

Tobias Smollett · Drama · 68 ch

The Mercy of Allah

The Mercy of Allah is a humorous, satirical novel on the methods by which the merchant Mahmoud rises from humble beginnings to massive wealth. The setting in a fictionalized Middle East provides deeply Catholic author Hilaire Belloc a “far-off land” in which to attack what he saw as the rapacious nature of the British businessmen, industrialists, and bankers of his day. Each episode of Mahmoud’s life satirizes greed, from small frauds and outright theft, to market manipulation, money-printing, and funding both sides in a long war.

Hilaire Belloc · Comedy · 15 ch