Stephen leacock son
On December 30, , he was born in Swanmore, a southern English village close to Southampton. The Leacock family had ties to Madeira, where they amassed wealth via plantations and the founding of the renowned Leacock's Madeira wine. Agnes Butler, Stephen's mother, was born at Soberton, the Rev. Stephen's father, Peter Leacock, had originally intended to send his son to the colonies.
Still, he quickly dispatched them to South Africa, where he had bought a property after learning that Peter had married Agnes Butler at the age of eighteen without getting his permission. Sadly, the South African farm did not succeed, and the family moved back to Hampshire, England, the birthplace of Stephen. The family moved to Canada when Stephen was six years old, landing on a farm close to the Lake Simcoe coast community of Sutton, Ontario.
However, their attempts at farming in Georgina Township were short-lived, and they were dependent on Leacock's paternal grandpa for financial assistance to get by. Agnes and the kids were left behind when Stephen's father, Thomas had developed alcoholism, traveled to Manitoba with his brother E. Leacock in the fall of Later, Stephen would utilize these early experiences as inspiration for his writing, such as in his novel "My Remarkable Uncle," which was centered around his intrepid uncle E.
Stephen Leacock's academic career started at Toronto's prestigious Upper Canada College, a private institution assigned to him by his grandpa because of his obvious intelligence. His elder brothers also attended the school. Leacock did exceptionally well in school, routinely finishing at the top of his class and being selected as head boy.
After graduating from Upper Canada College in , he learned that his father had returned from Manitoba when he got home. This reconnection was very temporary because his father quickly left the family again and never came back. There are differing reports about what happened to Peter Leacock.
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Some say he traveled to Argentina, while other sources say he moved to Nova Scotia and took on the name Lewis. Stephen Leacock has joined in University College at the University of Toronto in , when he was 17 years old, and was agreed into the fraternity Zeta Psi. He was first given an ordinary scholarship to help pay for his education. However, after just one year of school, he was forced to drop out with the cause of financial issues.
He then entered the teaching profession, which he detested. He was employed as a teacher at Uxbridge, Strathroy, and finally Toronto. He taught at his old mater, Upper Canada College, but also managed to take part-time courses at the University of Toronto. He completed his degree successfully in while attending classes part-time.
His literary career began during this time when some of his early works were printed in the college newspaper, The Varsity. Stephen Leacock experienced many changes and intricacies in his academic and political life. Leacock began submitting articles to the Toronto humour magazine Grip in , and soon was publishing many humorous articles in Canadian and US magazines.
In , he privately published the best of these as Literary Lapses. The book was spotted by a British publisher, John Lane , who brought out editions in London and New York, assuring Leacock's future as a writer.
This was confirmed by Literary Lapses , Nonsense Novels — probably his best books of humorous sketches—and by the more sentimental favourite, Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town However, his Arcadian Adventures with the Idle Rich is a darker collection that satirizes city life. Collections of sketches continued to follow almost annually at times, with a mixture of whimsy, parody, nonsense, and satire that was never bitter.
Leacock was enormously popular not only in Canada but in the United States and Britain. He also won the Mark Twain medal and received a number of honorary doctorates. Other nonfiction books on Canadian topics followed and he began work on an autobiography.
Leacock died of throat cancer in Toronto in A prize for the best humour writing in Canada was named after him, and his house at Orillia on the banks of Lake Couchiching became the Stephen Leacock Museum. Predeceased by Trix who had died of breast cancer in , Leacock was survived by son Stevie Stephen Lushington Leacock — In accordance with his wishes, after his death from throat cancer , Leacock was buried in the St George the Martyr Churchyard St.
His summer cottage became derelict, and was declared a National Historic Site of Canada in In , the Stephen Leacock Award was created to meet the best in Canadian literary humour. In , the centennial of his birth, Canada Post issued a six-cent stamp with his image on it. The following year, the Stephen Leacock Centennial Committee had a plaque erected at his English birthplace and a mountain in Yukon was named after him.
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Stephen leacock biography summary of thomas shelby: Stephen P. H. Butler Leacock FRSC (30 December – 28 March ) was a Canadian teacher, political scientist, writer, and humourist. Between the years and , he was the best-known English-speaking humourist in the world. [ 1 ].
Download as PDF Printable version. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikiquote Wikisource Wikidata item. Canadian writer and economist. Early life [ edit ].
Stephen leacock biography summary of thomas jefferson
Academic and political life [ edit ]. Aberhart Bennett R. Bennett W. Extant parties. Historical parties. Other organizations.
Stephen leacock biography summary of thomas
Literary life [ edit ]. Memorial Medal for Humour [ edit ]. Personal life [ edit ]. Death and tributes [ edit ]. Adaptations [ edit ]. Bibliography [ edit ]. Fiction and humour [ edit ]. Non-fiction [ edit ]. My Financial Career. Number Fifty-Six. On Collecting Things. Self-Made Men. Society Chit-Chat.
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The Awful Fate of Melpomenus Jones. The Errors of Santa Claus. The Force of Statistics. The New Food. The latter takes place in a large American city and is much more scathing in its criticism of what Leacock saw as a hypocritical, self-serving and ultimately destructive economic upper-class. Leacock also wrote extensively about humor, which he saw as the ultimate expression of human kindness and progress.
He wrote about Mark Twain, Charles Dickens and others, and his thesis is most fully developed in Humour and Humanity