Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, became an instant success and has never been out of print. In its first twenty years alone, the book sold over a million copies worldwide. It has been adapted to films, TV, and radio shows, stage plays, and a musical, and influenced subsequent writers such as P. G. Wodehouse, James Thurber, and Nick Hornby. It ranks among The Guardians top one hundred best English novels of all time. Jeromes light comic prose overtook what was intended as a series of magazine articles about the scenery and history of the Thames and became instead a humorous travelogue of a two-week boating holiday amongst three friends and the narrators dog, Montmorency. The narrator muses on the significance of passing landmarks and villages such as Hampton Court Palace, Hampton Church, Magna Carta Island, and Monkey Island, while relating the hilarious mishaps of their adventure along with observations on everything from the unreliability of weather forecasts to the difficulties of learning to play the Scottish bagpipes. Includes the original publication illustrations by A. Frederics. Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) was an English novelist, playwright, and actor. He is the author of the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, and several other books, including Three Men on the Bummel, the sequel to his best-known novel Three Men in a Boat.