Born Dec. 30, 1869, in Swanmoor, England; died Mar. 28, 1944, in Toronto. English Canadian writer.

Leacock graduated from the University of Toronto in 1891. In 1903 he graduated from the University of Chicago and became a professor. The author of works on political economy and the history of Canada and Great Britain, he was popular for his humorous short stories, which were published in a number of collections: Literary Lapses (1910), Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town (1912), and Arcadian Adventures With the Idle Rich (1914). In these stories he described the mores of Canadian provincial towns and made fun of the prejudices and double standards of bourgeois morality. Leacock rose to the level of political satire in his stories on the electoral system in the USA and on British parliamentarianism. He published Humour as I Understand It (1916), Humor: Its Theory and Technique (1935), Humour and Humanity (1937), and How to Write (1944).