 1889 edition cover | |
| Author | Jerome Klapka Jerome |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Comedy novel |
| Publisher | J. W. Arrowsmith |
Publication date | 1889 |
| Publication place | United Kingdom |
| ISBN | 0-7653-4161-1 |
| OCLC | 213830865 |
| Followed by | Three Men on the Bummel |
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog),[Note 1] published in 1889,[1] is a humorous novel by English writer Jerome K. Jerome describing a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide,[2] with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers – the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty.[3]
The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. Jerome) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who would become a senior manager at Barclays Bank) and Carl Hentschel (the founder of a London printing business, called Harris in the book), with whom Jerome often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional[2] but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog".[3] The trip is a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff.[Note 2]
Following the overwhelming success of Three Men in a Boat, Jerome later published a sequel, about a cycling tour in Germany, titled Three Men on the Bummel (also known as Three Men on Wheels, 1900).
Cite error: There are <ref group=Note> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=Note}} template (see the help page).
- ^ Jerome, Jerome K. (1889). Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). Bristol & London: J.W. Arrowsmith & Simpkin, Marshall & Co. Retrieved 10 April 2018 – via Internet Archive.
- ^ a b Jeremy Lewis' introduction to the Penguin edition.
- ^ a b Geoffrey Harvey (1998). "Introduction", Oxford World's Classics edition of Three Men in a Boat; Three Men on the Bummel.