The Holiday Round

A. A. Milne's The Holiday Round turns ordinary leisure into a chain of comic reversals, where cold sea baths, becalmed boats, ruined picnics, and weather-dodging schemes become occasions for wit, teasing, and affectionate absurdity. Archie, Dahlia, Myra, Simpson, Thomas, and the narrator drift from one holiday mishap to the next, surviving boredom, improvised fires, mixed cricket plans, and even a serenade to the neighbors with their camaraderie intact. The book delights in idle conversation, mock-heroics, and the way friendship can make disappointment feel like entertainment. Alongside these holiday sketches, Milne broadens his satire into playful literary and theatrical parody. A dryly comic Cinderella retelling undercuts fairy-tale sentiment with modern practicality, while "A Literary Light" skewers topical journalism and manufactured expertise through the rise of Annesley Bupp, a writer who becomes famous by turning every passing subject into copy. The mock dramatic piece "Little Plays for Amateurs" and a melodramatic rebel romance add further layers of spoof, ending in secret passages, arrests, swordplay, and a farcical happy ending. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.