Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) was an English humorist, author of Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog!), the comic account of a boating holiday on the Thames that has never been out of print since 1889. He also wrote essays, plays and a sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, about a cycling tour in Germany.
Works
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
A poor childhood
Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in 1859 in Walsall, Staffordshire. His father, a preacher and businessman, lost his money in mining ventures, and the family moved to the East End of London, where they lived in poverty. His father died when Jerome was twelve, and his mother a few years later.
At fourteen he left school to work as a railway clerk. He was then in turn an actor, a journalist, a schoolmaster and a solicitor's clerk, experiences he drew on in his early books, such as On the Stage and Off.
Three Men in a Boat
In 1888 Jerome married Georgina Marris, known as Ettie, and they spent their honeymoon on the Thames. Soon afterwards he began to write a guidebook to the river, with history and scenery, but the comic episodes took over.
Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, describes a boating trip from Kingston to Oxford by the narrator, J., his friends George and Harris, and the dog Montmorency. The comic misadventures with tins without openers, Irish stew and maps of the Hampton Court maze made it a huge success.
The Idler and later years
In 1892 Jerome co-founded the magazine The Idler, which published Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and Rudyard Kipling. His play The Passing of the Third Floor Back, about a mysterious stranger who changes the lives of a lodging house's inhabitants, was a success in 1908.
During the First World War, too old to fight, he served as an ambulance driver with the French army. He died in 1927 and is buried at Ewelme, in Oxfordshire, near the Thames.
Anecdotes
The real three men
The three men of the book were based on Jerome himself and two friends, George Wingrave, a bank clerk, and Carl Hentschel, a printer, who became Harris. The dog Montmorency, however, was entirely invented.
Bigger in Russia
Three Men in a Boat was extremely popular in Russia and later in the Soviet Union, where it was long read in schools, and it has been translated into many languages.
Frequently asked questions
What is Three Men in a Boat about?
A comic boating holiday on the River Thames by three friends, J., George and Harris, and the dog Montmorency, published in 1889.
What does the K in Jerome K. Jerome stand for?
Klapka, after the Hungarian general György Klapka, a friend of his father.
Did Jerome write a sequel?
Yes. Three Men on the Bummel (1900) follows the same three friends on a cycling tour in Germany.