Other editions of book Three Men in a Boat

The story begins by introducing George, Harris, Jerome (always referred to as "J."), and Jerome's dog, a fox terrier called Montmorency. The men are spending an evening in J.'s room, smoking and discussing illnesses from which they fancy they suffer. They conclude that they are all suffering from "overwork" and need a holiday. A stay in the country and a sea trip are both considered. The country stay is rejected because Harris claims that it would be dull, the sea-trip after J. describes bad experiences of his brother-in-law and a friend on sea trips. The three eventually decide on a boating holiday up the River Thames, from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford, during which they will camp, notwithstanding more of J.'s anecdotes about previous mishaps with tents and camping stoves.

If you've never read anything by Jerome K. Jerome, you'd be well advised to heed this warning by the Glasgow Herald: "It would be dangerous to [listen to] this book in any place--say a full railway compartment--where the reader was not at perfect liberty to laugh as loudly and as long as he chose." The passage of time has not altered that verdict. Here is a perfect picture of those lazy summer days "messing about in boats." After his final trip up the river Thames with his three companions--Harris, George, and Montmorency the dog--Jerome K. Jerome sat down to write his proposed book, The Story of the Thames. But before he could tackle the work in the serious manner intended, his humor took over and gave birth to a masterpiece of unquenchable comedy. This is a classic of English humor, justifiably loved around the world.

How is this book unique? Font adjustments & biography included Unabridged (100% Original content) Formatted for e-reader Illustrated About Three Men In A Boat by Jerome K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, 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 seem fresh and witty even today. The three men are based on Jerome himself 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 J. often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog." The trip is a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff. This was just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, replaced by the 1880s craze for boating as a leisure activity.

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