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  • Published: 10 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780141441214
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $17.99

Three Men in a Boat




A comic masterpiece that has never been out of print since it was first published in 1889, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat includes an introduction and notes by Jeremy Lewis in Penguin Classics.
Martyrs to hypochondria and general seediness, J. and his friends George and Harris decide that a jaunt up the Thames would suit them to a 'T'. But when they set off, they can hardly predict the troubles that lie ahead with tow-ropes, unreliable weather forecasts and tins of pineapple chunks - not to mention the devastation left in the wake of J.'s small fox-terrier Montmorency. Three Men in a Boat was an instant success when it appeared in 1889, and, with its benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian 'clerking classes', it hilariously captured the spirit of its age.
In his introduction, Jeremy Lewis examines Jerome K. Jerome's life and times, and the changing world of Victorian England he depicts - from the rise of a new mass-culture of tabloids and bestselling novels to crazes for daytripping and bicycling.
Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) was born in Walstall, Staffordshire, and educated at Marylebone Grammar School. He left school at fourteen to become a railway clerk, the first in a long line of jobs that included actor, teacher and journalist. His first book, On Stage and Off, a collection of humorous pieces about the theatre, was published in 1885, and was followed the year after with the more commercially-successful The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; but it was with Three Men in a Boat (1889) that Jerome achieved lasting fame. He later went on to become one of the founders of the humorous magazine, The Idler, and continued to write articles and plays.
If you enjoyed Three Men in a Boat, you might like Stella Gibbons's Cold Comfort Farm, also available in Penguin Classics.

  • Published: 10 May 2004
  • ISBN: 9780141441214
  • Imprint: Penguin Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 176
  • RRP: $17.99

Other books in the series

Maldoror and Poems
On Sparta
Love
Annals
Military Dispatches

About the authors

Jerome K Jerome

George and Weedon Grossmith were born in London in 1847 and 1852 respectively to a theatrical family who were friends with Henry Irving and Ellen Terry. George became a popular composer and performer of comic songs as well as a successful actor. Weedon trained as a painter at the Slade and the Royal Academy, but soon turned to acting like his brother. The Diary of a Nobody began life as a series of columns the brothers wrote together for Punch which they later expanded into a novel. It was published in 1892, with Weedon's illustrations, to instant acclaim and has remained in print ever since. George died in 1912, followed by his brother in 1919.

Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in Walsall on 2 May 1859 and brought up in East London. After his father died, Jerome left school at fourteen and worked as a railway clerk, actor, journalist and teacher. In 1885 he published On the Stage - and Off which was followed in 1886 by Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. In 1888 Jerome married Georgina Stanley and a year later he published his most famous work, Three Men in a Boat. The sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, appeared in 1900. Jerome also wrote several other novels, plays, stories and autobiographical writings, edited The Idler and Today magazines and, during the First World War, worked for the French ambulance service. Jerome K. Jerome died on 14 June 1927.

Vic Reeves

Vic Reeves is one of the UK's most popular comedians. His TV successes with Bob Mortimer have included Vic Reeves Big Night Out, The Smell of Reeves and Mortimer, Shooting Stars and Families at War.