Three Men in a Boat: (To Say Nothing of the Dog)

Jerome’s light comic prose overtook what was intended as a series of magazine articles about the scenery and history of the Thames and became instead a humorous travelogue of a two-week boating holiday amongst three friends and the narrator’s dog, Montmorency. The narrator muses on the significance of passing landmarks and villages such as Hampton Court Palace, Hampton Church, Magna Carta Island, and Monkey Island, while relating the hilarious mishaps of their adventure along with observations on everything from the unreliability of weather forecasts to the difficulties of learning to play the Scottish bagpipes.

Jerome K. Jerome (1859-1927) was an English novelist, playwright, and actor. He is the author of the essay collections Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow and Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, and several other books, including Three Men on the Bummel, the sequel to his best-known novel Three Men in a Boat.