describes bad experiences his brother-in-law and a friend had on previous sea-trips. The country stay is rejected because Harris claims that it would be dull, and the sea-trip after J. A stay in the country and a sea trip are both considered. They conclude that they are all suffering from 'overwork', and need a holiday. The men are spending an evening in J.'s room, smoking and discussing illnesses from which they fancy they suffer. The story begins by introducing George, Harris, Jerome (always referred to as 'J.'), and Jerome's dog, named Montmorency. įollowing the overwhelming success of Three Men in a Boat, Jerome later published a sequel, about a cycling tour in Germany, titled Three Men on the Bummel (also known as Three Men on Wheels, 1900).įrontpage Jerome Three Men in a Boat 1889 The trip is a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff. 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'. Jerome) 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 Jerome often took boating trips. The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K.

One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers – the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty. 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. Jerome of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K.

To say nothing of the dog