Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in Walsall on 2 May 1859 and brought up in East London. After his father died, Jerome left school at fourteen and worked as a railway clerk, actor, journalist and teacher. In 1885 he published On the Stage - and Off which was followed in 1886 by Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow. In 1888 Jerome married Georgina Stanley and a year later he published his most famous work, Three Men in a Boat. The sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, appeared in 1900. Jerome also wrote several other novels, plays, stories and autobiographical writings, edited The Idler and Today magazines and, during the First World War, worked for the French ambulance service. Jerome K. Jerome died on 14 June 1927.

Wonderfully fresh and funny, and among examples of Victorian humour I would place it high in the pantheon, right up there with The Importance of Being Earnest and The Diary of a Nobody...Jerome's writing...triumphantly stands the test of time, with its comic flights of exaggeration, its occasional archness, and its entirely innocent hint of the camp