Product Description
This unique, great-value edition contains 14 full length works by the English humorist Jerome K Jerome. Includes the complete text of: Three Men in a Boat, Three Men on the Bummel, Diary of a Pilgrimage, Novel Notes, Paul Kelver, Tommy and Co, They and I, All Roads Lead to Calvary, Idle Ideas in 1905, The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, The Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, Tea-Table Talk, Told after Supper, and The Passing of the Third Floor Back. A must for any fan of Jerome K Jerome's original and witty writing!
From the Author
"One or two friends to whom I showed these papers in MS having observed that they were not half bad, and some of my relations having promised to buy the book if it ever came out, I feel I have no right to longer delay its issue. But for this, as one may say, public demand, I perhaps should not have ventured to offer these mere "idle thoughts" of mine as mental food for the English-speaking peoples of the earth. What readers ask nowadays in a book is that it should improve, instruct, and elevate. This book wouldn't elevate a cow. I cannot conscientiously recommend it for any useful purposes whatever. All I can suggest is that when you get tired of reading "the best hundred books," you may take this up for half an hour. It will be a change."
From the Inside Flap
I objected to the sea trip strongly. A sea trip does you good when you are going to have a couple of months of it, but, for a week, it is wicked.
You start on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a wan, sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with your bag and umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale, waiting to step ashore, you begin to thoroughly like it.
From the Back Cover
I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever -- read the symptoms -- discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it -- wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance -- found, as I expected, that I had that too -- began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically -- read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.
About the Author
Jerome K. Jerome was the fourth child of Jerome Clapp Jerome, a lay preacher and architect who died when Jerome was fourteen. Inspite of being well off in his profession Jerome senior tried mining on his land. Things started going wrong for him when he started his mining venture and took a turn for worse when he became a partner in an iron works and later delved into coal mining. Being born in such an unfortunate background, we can feel the influence of these fascinating experiences of his life on his writings.
Born on 2 May 1859 in Belsize House, Bradford Street, Walsall, Staffordshire, England Jerome K. Jerome was given the middle name in honour of a family friend, Hungarian exile and hero George Klapka.
London and North Western Railway was his first job amongst a number of occupations which included journalism and school teaching. After his mother's death, he became involved with a stage company which he described as 'the life whose glorious uncertainty almost rivals that of the turf.' Jerome adopted the name of Harold Crichton to make his professional debut as a stage actor.
He wrote numerous short stories and plays but all of them were rejected. 'On the Stage - and Off, The Brief Career of a Would-Be Actor', (inspired by one of Longfellow's poems from 'By the Fireside') was his first well known writing which was based on his experiences as an actor. Even this was rejected by many publications, until Aylmer Gowing a retired actor, who edited The Play, realised its worth. This began his literary journey which included; The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow; Three Men In A Boat; The Diary of a Pilgrimage (a trip to Oberammergau to see the Passion Play); Paul Kelver; Three Men on the Bummel; amongst many others.
He wrote his slapstick tale of a riverboat trip up the Thames, Three Men in a Boat, (subtitle: 'to say nothing of the dog') in 1889. The story was inspired by his honeymoon and based on himself and two real-life friends, George Wingrave, whom he'd met while a clerk, and Carl Hentschel whom he'd met through the theatre.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Rather an amusing thing happened while dressing that morning. I was very cold when I got back into the boat, and, in my hurry to get my shirt on, I accidentally jerked it into the water. It made me awfully wild, especially as George burst out laughing. I could not see anything to laugh at, and I told George so, and he only laughed the more. I never saw a man laugh so much. I quite lost my temper with him at last, and I pointed out to him what a drivelling maniac of an imbecile idiot he was; but he only roared the louder. And then, just as I was landing the shirt, I noticed that it was not my shirt at all, but George's, which I had mistaken for mine; whereupon the humour of the thing struck me for the first time, and I began to laugh. And the more I looked from George's wet shirt to George, roaring with laughter, the more I was amused, and I laughed so much that I had to let the shirt fall back into the water again.
"Aren't you -- you -- going to get it out?" said George, between his shrieks.
I could not answer him at all for a while, I was laughing so, but, at last, between my peals I managed to jerk out:
"It isn't my shirt -- it's YOURS!"
I never saw a man's face change from lively to severe so suddenly in all my life before.
"What!" he yelled, springing up. "You silly cuckoo! Why can't you be more careful what you're doing? Why the deuce don't you go and dress on the bank? You're not fit to be in a boat, you're not. Gimme the hitcher."
I tried to make him see the fun of the thing, but he could not. George is very dense at seeing a joke sometimes.
