Jerome K. Jerome

Short Stories: The Timeless Collection features 20 well-loved and unabridged tales from the best-loved authors in the history of English literature, including the deliciously sardonic Saki and a brilliant semi-autobiographical tale by Charles Dickens, inspired by the railway. An array of well-known readers including Nigel Hawthorne, Martin Jarvis, Brian Cox, Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. LISTINGS: The Windmill as I First Knew It by Alphonse Daudet, Boil Some Water Lots of It by F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Disappearance of Crispina Umberleigh by Saki, Idle Thoughts on Babies by Jerome K. Jerome, The Schartz-Metterklume Method by Saki, A Photographer's Day Out by Lewis Carroll, Gentlemen and Players by E. W. Hornung, Mrs Amworth by E. F. Benson, Timber by John Galsworthy, Into the Sun by Robert Duncan Milne, No 1 Branch Line The Signalman by Charles Dickens, The Squaw by Bram Stoker, The Loathly Opposite by John Buchan, The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allan Poe, The Mezzotint by M. R. James, Angela by W. S. Gilbert, The Barrister's Story by Sapper, Jeff Peters as a Personal Magnet by O. Henry, Oh Whistle & I'll Come to You My Lad by M. R. James, The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County by Mark Twain.

While it is beyond doubt that Jerome K. Jerome is most well known for his comic masterpiece Three Men in a Boat, the range of his other literary achievements is staggering. Journalist, playwright and author, a wealth of his writing has remained just beyond the public gaze. Diary of a Pilgrimage is one such work. The pilgrimage of the title is a journey to see the famous Passion Play at Oberammergau, which has been performed every ten years since 1634, the middle of the Thirty Years War. Diary is a typically witty account of this journey, part travelogue and part social commentary. It is also a work which has long deserved its place in the sun, outside of the benevolent shade of Jerome’s more famous writing.

'There were four of us - George, William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency.'So begins this comic novel, which tells the tale of a boating expedition on the Thames, undertaken by three friends, to say nothing of the dog, Montmorency. It magnifies their adventures to epic proportions.

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.

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 proved so popular that Jerome reunited his now older - but not necessarily wiser - heroes in Three Men on the Bummel, for a picaresque bicycle tour of Germany. With their benign escapism, authorial discursions and wonderful evocation of the late-Victorian 'clerking classes', both novels hilariously capture the spirit of their age.

Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859-1927) was an English writer and humorist, best known for the humorous travelogue Three Men in a Boat and its sequel. He was born in Caldmore, Walsall, England, and was brought up inpoverty in London. Jerome was highly inspired by his sister's love for theatre. That's where his journey in various occupations began. From an actor to a journalist and to a teacher, he finally received recognition for his hard work. His other works include the essay collections 'Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow' (1886) and 'Second Thoughtsof an Idle Fellow'.

Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, M. A., Ph. D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex. Three Men in a Boat is a comic classic. When it first appeared in 1889 it became a best seller, and has remained popular ever since. This motley novel has not only been translated into many languages but has also been staged, filmed, televised and imitated. The adventures and misfortunes on the Thames of the three English friends and their pugnacious dog, Montmorency, provide rich humour, shrewd observations, lyrical reflections, and, predominantly, genially ironic perceptions of human fallibility. The sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, reunites the three friends for their ‘Bummel’ (‘roaming or wandering’) through Germany. The results vary from the seductively titillating to the outrageously farcical; and subsequent history has laden the narrative with ironies.

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, published in 1886, is a collection of humorous essays by Jerome K. Jerome. It was the author's second published book and it helped establish him as a leading English humorist. While widely considered one of Jerome's better works, and in spite of using the same style as Three Men in a Boat, it was never as popular as the latter. A second "Idle Thoughts" book, The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow, was published in 1898. The essays had previously appeared in Home Chimes, the same magazine that later serialised Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.