Three Men in a Boat (to say nothing of the dog)

1 About this book

Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous novel by English writer Jerome K. Jerome describing a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. 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 from 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 have been praised as fresh and witty a century after publication.

The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. 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). The trio often took boating trips.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Good for readers who want: humor, a classic, friendship, and a book they can read free online.

• Humor
• Male friendship
• Classics
• Friendship
• Dogs
• American wit and humor
• Description and travel
• Boats and boating