Written in 1931, Cold Comfort Farm, by Stella Gibbons, is one of the funniest books I've read. And it's also well-written. These excerpts are a taste:

Nineteen year old Flora Poste's parents have died, leaving her with no property. She begins writing to relatives in search of a place to stay:

But Flora was reading the third letter. Her mother's cousin in South Kensington said that she would be very pleased to have Flora, only there was a little difficulty about the bedroom. Perhaps Flora would not mind using the large attic, which was now used as a meeting-room for the Orient-Star-in-the-West Society on Tuesdays, and for the Spiritist Investigation League on Fridays. She hoped that Flora was not a sceptic, for manifestations sometimes occurred in the attic, and even a trace of scepticism in the atmosphere of the room spoiled conditions, and prevented phenomena, the observations of which provided the Society with such valuable evidence in favor of Survival. Would Flora mind if the parrot kept his corner of the attic? He had grown up in it, and at his age the shock of removal might well prove fatal.

On the farm:

The beasts stood with heads lowered dejectedly against the wooden hoot-pieces of their stalls. Graceless, Pointless, Feckless, and Aimless awaited their turn to be milked.

Flora asks Mrs. Murther the landlady if she "did" lunches:

A smile indicating a shuddering thankfulness, as of one who peers into a pit into which others have fallen while she has escaped, passed over the face of Mrs. Murther, as she replied that she did not.