Three Men in a Boat

Three Man in a Boat is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome and was published in 1889. This is an account of Jerome’s two-week boating holiday on the River Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The most amazing part of this book is that it contains jokes which are fresh and witty even today for the modern readers. The three men in the book are real ones and based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. Jerome) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave and Carl Hentschel with whom Jerome often took boating trips. There is also the dog, Montmorency, who is fictional but, contains as an essential element.

The book's original purpose was intended to be a travelogue that author as narrator describes while passing through various landmarks, villages and historical places. However, author frequently digresses into humorous anecdotes. The most frequent topics of anecdotes are river pastimes such as fishing and boating and the difficulties they present to the three men on previous boating trips.