Novel Cbse X
April 13, 2008
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome - Summary & Book Index
About - Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.
The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over, to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages now seem like an unnecessary distraction to the essentially 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 were based on the narrator (Jerome himself) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who went on to become a senior manager in Barclays Bank) and Harris (in reality Carl Hentschel, the founder of a well-known London printing business). The dog, Montmorency, was entirely fictional, but as Jerome had remarked, "had much of me in it." The holiday was a typical boating holiday of the time, carried out in a Thames Camping Skiff. This was just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, to be replaced by the 1880's craze for boating as a leisure activity.
There was a less successful sequel, about a cycling tour in Germany, entitled Three Men on the Bummel.
A similar book was published seven years before Jerome's work, entitled Three in Norway (by two of them) by J. A. Lees and W. J. Clutterbuck. It tells the story of three men on an expedition into the wild Jotunheimen in Norway. The similarities between the two books are striking. Plot Summary
The story beings by introducing the main characters - George, Harris, 'J' (Jerome, the narrator) and Montmorency, the dog. The men are spending an evening in J's room, smoking and idly discussing various illnesses they fancy they are suffering
Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome - Summary & Book Index
About - Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by Jerome K. Jerome of a boating holiday on the Thames between Kingston and Oxford.
The book was intended initially to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history of places along the route, but the humorous elements eventually took over, to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages now seem like an unnecessary distraction to the essentially 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 were based on the narrator (Jerome himself) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who went on to become a senior manager in Barclays Bank) and Harris (in reality Carl Hentschel, the founder of a well-known London printing business). The dog, Montmorency, was entirely fictional, but as Jerome had remarked, "had much of me in it." The holiday was a typical boating holiday of the time, carried out in a Thames Camping Skiff. This was just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, to be replaced by the 1880's craze for boating as a leisure activity.
There was a less successful sequel, about a cycling tour in Germany, entitled Three Men on the Bummel.
A similar book was published seven years before Jerome's work, entitled Three in Norway (by two of them) by J. A. Lees and W. J. Clutterbuck. It tells the story of three men on an expedition into the wild Jotunheimen in Norway. The similarities between the two books are striking. Plot Summary
The story beings by introducing the main characters - George, Harris, 'J' (Jerome, the narrator) and Montmorency, the dog. The men are spending an evening in J's room, smoking and idly discussing various illnesses they fancy they are suffering