This is the only contemporary critical study to discuss the nature of comedy with exclusive reference to novels. It examines the comic styles of novelists from Fielding and Jane Austen to Waugh and Agnus Wilson, as well as less familiar writers such as Ronald Firbank and Sylvia Townsend Warner. Distinguishing between different kinds of humour, it shows how comedy works in practice under changing literary, social and environmental conditions, and is designed to interest academic and general readers equally.