Feast of Stephen
“Do you know the characteristic wine of Madeira?... I do not know whether Leacock ever drank Madeira himself—he was very much a Scotch-whisky man—but I enjoy Madeira greatly, and I never drink it without thinking of Leacock, who was sometimes dry, sometimes sweet, but who always leaves upon the tongue a hint of brimstone..."
In his witty and illuminating introduction, which takes up the first third of the book, Robertson Davies invites us to join him in a Feast of Stephen. Davies’ selection of fifteen pieces from Leacock’s less familiar works presents the humorist as a true, broad, and sympathetic interpreter of Canadian life, as a man who may have lacked self-knowledge…