HAPPY BIRTHDAY – Jerome K. Jerome, born 21 May 1859
Jerome K Jerome, about 1889
“I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours.”
Jerome Klapka Jerome was a humorist and novelist who made his fame with the 1889 novel Three Men in a Boat. It is an Edwardian romp which exactly captured the mood of the era. The scene when the 3 men visit the maze in Hampton Court is hilarious, and how can you not love a book in which the dog is named Montmorency? Jerome followed it up with a sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, about a cycling holiday in Germany, but that book was feeble in comparison.
He also wrote plays, skits, stories, essays and even a musical, but he was never able to replicate the success of the book he wrote just after returning from honeymoon.
Jerome K. Jerome died on 14 June 1927, aged 68. Today there is a museum in his name in his birthplace, Walsall, in the north of England, and there is a statue of a boat, with a mosaic of the dog in London to commemorate his journey.
To learn more about him, try Below the Fairy City: A Life of Jerome K. Jerome by Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton
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Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome
Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome
Below the Fairy City, A Life of Jerome K. Jerome by Carolyn W. de la L. Oulton
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