Starting with Caxton in 1477 Frank Muir shows how humorous writing has developed and refined through five centuries by such practitioners and innovators as Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Laurence Sterne, and also how humour ranges from the crude to the subtle. It includes extracts from 215 different authors and anonymous pieces and there is a representation of American, Canadian, Australian and New Zealand prose as well as from Britain. The extracts quoted vary in length from a single paragraph to a complete story and there is a connecting text which introduces and sets the pieces in context. Framk Muir has written The Frank Muir Book.