Looking for funny short stories that still make readers laugh a century later? This collection brings together comic ghost tales, Saki's wicked satire and the tall tales of Mark Twain.
Every story comes from a writer who turned humor into an art, like P. G. Wodehouse, Stephen Leacock, Jerome K. Jerome and Nikolai Gogol. You'll meet a ghost bullied by an American family and a nose that walks away from its owner's face.
Every book is free to read online or download as PDF. Most of these humorous short stories take less than twenty minutes, so they fit a lunch break or a night of reading aloud.
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For Adults
Funny Short Stories for Adults
These funny short stories for adults trade slapstick for sharp wit, social blunders and everyday disasters. Many first ran in magazines like Harper's and The Strand, with P. G. Wodehouse and Stephen Leacock leading the way.
Thirteen stories from 1917 about hopeless suitors, chorus girls and young men in over their heads, including the very first appearance of Jeeves. Wodehouse's gift for comic misunderstanding is already in full form.
Leacock's portrait of Mariposa, a sleepy lakeside town where a sinking steamboat, a church fire and a local election become small-town epics. Gentle, sharp and still one of the funniest books about local pride.
Golf stories told by the Oldest Member from the clubhouse terrace, where love, poetry and visiting Russian novelists all lose to a well-struck drive. You don't need to play golf to laugh at them.
Leacock's first collection of comic sketches, published in 1910. It opens with My Financial Career, where a nervous man tries to open a bank account and fails in spectacular style.
Eighteen stories written between 1839 and 1914, from Edgar Allan Poe and Mark Twain's Celebrated Jumping Frog to Bret Harte and O. Henry. A complete tour of American humor in short form.
Funny ghost stories turn the haunted house upside down, because here the ghosts are the ones losing sleep. Start with Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost, then try the Humorous Ghost Stories anthology edited by Dorothy Scarborough.
An American family buys a haunted English manor and refuses to be scared, leaving its 300-year-old ghost exhausted and humiliated. Our own Project Aldus edition of Oscar Wilde's comic ghost story, freshly typeset with its own cover.
Eighteen comic ghost tales collected in 1921, from Frank R. Stockton's The Transferred Ghost to Washington Irving's The Specter Bridegroom. Spirits who get lost, get evicted or simply can't scare anyone.
Comic ghost stories led by the tale of a dripping spirit who floods a country house every Christmas Eve until the owner finds a way to freeze her solid. Light, clever spooks for a cozy evening.
A Christmas Eve party trades ghost stories over too much punch, and every tale goes hilariously wrong. Jerome K. Jerome's parody of the Victorian fireside ghost story.
On a club boat moored on the river Styx, the ghosts of Shakespeare, Socrates, Napoleon and Dr. Johnson argue, gossip and play pranks for all eternity. The 1895 comedy that gave its name to a whole genre of afterlife fantasy.
Saki, the pen name of H. H. Munro, wrote some of the sharpest humorous short stories in English. In Beasts and Super-Beasts and The Chronicles of Clovis, scheming aunts and stuffy aristocrats get exactly what they deserve.
Saki's 1914 collection, home to The Open Window and The Lumber-Room, where children, animals and pranksters outwit stuffy adults. Short, wicked and perfectly timed.
Clovis Sangrail, a young man with a gift for mischief, turns polite Edwardian society upside down. Includes Tobermory, the cat who learns to talk and reveals everyone's secrets at a country house party.
Saki's first book of stories, published in 1904. The young dandy Reginald delivers outrageous opinions on aunts, Christmas presents, the Academy and good manners in a series of short, quotable sketches.
Reginald visits a Russian princess in the title story, followed by sketches like The Mouse, where a shy man must deal with a mouse loose inside his clothes in a train compartment shared with a lady.
Published after Saki died in the First World War, it opens with parents trying to give their boys peaceful toys instead of soldiers, with predictable results. Includes The Seven Cream Jugs and The Square Egg.
Satirical short stories use laughter to point at something wrong, from bureaucracy to vanity. In Gogol's The Nose, a civil servant's nose wanders off and gets a higher rank than its owner.
A St. Petersburg official wakes up without his nose, then spots it around town wearing the uniform of a higher rank. Gogol's absurd satire of status and vanity in Tsarist Russia.
Ten pocket parodies of popular fiction, from the detective story to the sea adventure and the romance. In Gertrude the Governess, the hero famously flings himself upon his horse and rides madly off in all directions.
Leacock takes aim at the millionaires of an American city: their exclusive club, their fashionable churches and their noisy campaigns for clean government. A companion to Sunshine Sketches with a much sharper edge.
Early Chekhov stories in Constance Garnett's translation, including A Chameleon, where a police officer changes his verdict on a dog bite each time he learns who owns the dog, and The Swedish Match, a parody of the detective story.
A stranger takes revenge on a town proud of its honesty with a sack of gold and a simple test that every leading citizen fails. Mark Twain's sharpest satire of hypocrisy and public virtue.
No list of funny short stories works without Mark Twain, who turned the American tall tale into literature. Start with The £1,000,000 Bank-Note and Extracts from Adam's Diary.
Twain's 1893 collection led by the famous tale of a penniless American handed a million-pound note in London. Eleven late-career sketches on luck, manners, and the comedy of mistaken status.
Twain's first popular collection, gathered in 1875 from his early newspaper years. Includes The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, the sketch that made him famous coast to coast.
O. Henry was the master of funny short stories with a twist. In The Ransom of Red Chief, two kidnappers learn that some children cost more to keep than to give back.
Two small-time crooks kidnap a banker's son for ransom and soon learn the boy is worse than any punishment. A comic twist on the kidnapping story, and the deal ends in a direction nobody expects.
The collection that includes "The Ransom of Red Chief", along with 23 more stories set from Texas ranches to New York boarding houses. O. Henry at his most playful, with plots that spin around in the final lines.
A young man who dared to love a princess must open one of two doors: behind one waits a bride, behind the other a hungry tiger. Stockton's 1882 story ends with a question readers have argued about ever since.
Funny stories with a moral teach the lesson by making you laugh first. Wise fools like Nasreddin Hodja and Till Eulenspiegel get there through tricks, jokes and spectacular mistakes.
Stories of simpletons from around the world, from the wise men of Gotham to the fools of Indian and Arabic folklore. Funny tales where the lesson comes from watching someone get it completely wrong.
The pranks and quick replies of Nasreddin Hodja, the wise fool of Turkish folklore, translated by George Borrow. Each anecdote takes less than a minute and ends with a lesson hidden in the joke.
The marvellous adventures of Till Eulenspiegel, the German prankster who takes every order literally and makes fools of bakers, priests and nobles. Kenneth Mackenzie's translation, with Alfred Crowquill's illustrations.
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