Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome Jerome

Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome Jerome

'Other works may excel this in depth of thought and knowledge of human nature: other books may rival it in originality and size; but, for hopeless and incurable vivacity, nothing yet discovered can surpass it.' (Jerome, Preface to Three Men in a Boat). Three Men in a Boat describes a comic expedition by middle-class Victorians up the Thames to Oxford. It provides brilliant snap-shots of London's playground in the late 1880s, where the fashionable steam-launches of river swells encounter the hired skiffs of city clerks. The medley of social vignettes, farcical incidents, descriptions of river fashions, and reflections on the Thames's history, is interspersed with humorous anecdotes told by a natural raconteur. Three Men on the Bummel records a similar escapade, a break from the claustrophobia of suburban life some ten years later; their cycling tour in the Black Forest, at the height of the new bicycling craze, affords Jerome the opportunity for a light-hearted scrutiny of German social customs at a time of increasing general interest in a country that he loved. This account of middle-aged Englishmen abroad is spiced with typical Jeromian humour.

Jerome, Jerome K.: - Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859 - 1927) was an English writer and humourist, best known for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat (1889). Other works include the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men on the Bummel, a sequel to Three Men in a Boat and several other novels. Jerome was inspired by his older sister Blandina's love for the theatre and he decided to try his hand at acting in 1877, under the stage name Harold Crichton. He joined a repertory troupe that produced plays on a shoestring budget, often drawing on the actors' own meager resources - Jerome was penniless at the time - to purchase costumes and props. After three years on the road with no evident success, the 21-year-old Jerome decided that he had enough of stage life and sought other occupations. He tried to become a journalist, writing essays, satires and short stories, but most of these were rejected. Over the next few years, he was a school teacher, a packer and a solicitor's clerk. Finally, in 1885, he had some success with On the Stage - and Off (1885), a comic memoir of his experiences with the acting troupe, followed by Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886), a collection of humorous essays which had previously appeared in the newly founded magazine, Home Chimes, the same magazine that would later serialize Three Men in a Boat.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780192880338
ISBN 10	0192880330
Title	Three Men in a Boat and Three Men on the Bummel
Author	Jerome Jerome
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oxford University Press
Year published	1998-08-01
Number of pages	362
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable