Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

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Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon the Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston. The trip was a typical boating holiday of the time in a Thames camping skiff, just after commercial boat traffic on the Upper Thames had died out, and replaced by the 1880s craze for boating as a leisure activity. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with details of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seem a distraction to the comic novel. 

The novel begins with the introduction of George, Harris, Jerome (who is referred to as 'J' in the novel), and J's dog, named Montmorency. The protagonists of the story are spending an evening in J's room, smoking, and discussing their workload they are suffering from, and badly need a holiday. The stay in the country and a sea trip both are considered but rejected immediately due to a few reasons. The three eventually decide a boating trip holiday up the River Thames, from Kingston to Oxford, during which they will camp, notwithstanding more of J's anecdotes about previous mishaps with tents and camping stoves.

They set off on the following Saturday and on the very first day their misadventure starts with bribing the train driver to take his train to Kingston where they collect their hired boat and start their journey on the Thames. The remainder of the story describes their river journey and the incidents that occur. They pass through landmarks and villages. They experience favorite pastime fishing and encounter unpredictable situations during their journey on the boat such as imaginary illnesses, butter pats, tins of pineapple chunks, tow-ropes, and unreliable barometer incidents, that bring a humorous lifetime memory to their lives. 




Review
The novel Three Men in a boat is based on the author Jerome K. Jerome (the narrator J-Jerome) and his two real-life friends, George Wingrave as George and Carl Hentschel as Harris, with whom Jerome often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is completely fictional but as an Englishman, Jerome's inner consciousness always contains an element of the dog.

The narrator J. chronicles his misadventures in the novel full of wit and humor. He frequently rambles into humorous anecdotes of the boat trip, that bring attentiveness to its readers more and make them turn the page eagerly. One of the most praised things about the novel is how undated it appears to modern readers the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty.

The reception by critics varied between lukewarm and hostile. Modern era critics have praised the humor but criticized the book's unevenness, as the humorous passages are scattered with serious passages, sometimes in purple prose, that overpower the serious passages written in sentimental style.



The expansion of education and the increase in office workers created a new mass readership, and Jerome's book was especially popular among the 'clerking class' who longed to be 'free from that fretful haste'. The book brought popularity into Jerome's life that he reunited his heroes for a bicycle tour of Germany in Three Men on the Bummel.


Adaptation




Audio

Audiobooks of the novel have been released many times, with different narrators. The BBC has broadcast on radio a number of dramatizations of the story, including a musical version in 1962 starring Kenneth Horne, Leslie Philips, and Hubert Gregg, a three-episode version in 1984 and a two-part adaptation for Classic Serial in 2013.




Film and Television

1. Three Men in a Boat, a 1920 silent British film with Lionelle Howard as J., H Manning Haynes as Harris, and Johnny Butt as George.
2. Three Men in a Boat, a 1933 British film with William Austin, Edmund Breon, and Billy Milton.
3. Three Men in a Boat, a 1956 British film with David Tomlinson, Jimmy Edwards, and Laurence Harvey.
4. Drei Mann in einem Boot, a 1961 German film very loosely based on the book.
5. Three Men in a Boat, a 1975 BBC-produced version for television adapted by Tom Stoppard and directed by Stephen Frears, starring Tim Curry, Michael Palin, and Stephen Moore.
6. Three Men in a Boat, a 1979 Russian musical comedy filmed by Soviet television, with Andrei Mironov, Aleksandr Shirvindt, and Mikhail Derzhavin.
7. Peter Lovesey's Victorian detective novel Swing, Swing Together (1976), partly based on the book, featured as the second episode of the television series Cribb.

In 2005, the three comedians Griff Rhys Jones, Dara Ó Brian, and Rory McGrath embarked on a recreation of the novel and it became a regular yearly BBC TV series, Three Men in a Boat. Their first expedition was along the Thames from Kingston upon the Thames to Oxford. After this, the trio embarked on a trip from London to the Isle of Wight in Jones's yacht where they would race her against her sister's yacht. The following year, Three Men in More Than One Boat, in which they borrow, steal, and hitchhiking on numerous vessels to make their way from Plymouth to the Isles of Scilly. On another adventure for 2009, the trio takes the waterways of Ireland to make their way from Dublin to Limerick with Dara's greyhound. The first episode of Three Men Go to Scotland was broadcast at the end of 2010.


Theatre
A stage adaptation earned Jeremy Nicholas a Best Newcomer in a Play nomination at the 1981 Laurence Olivier Awards. The book was adapted by Clive Francis for a 2006 production that toured the UK.


Art
A sculpture of a stylized boat was created in 1999 to commemorate Three Men in a Boat on the Millenium Green in New Southgate, London, where the author lived as a child. In 2012 a mosaic of a dog's head was put onto the same green to commemorate Montmorency.


Other works of literature
In 1891, Three Women in One Boat: A river Sketch by Constance McEwen was published. The book is about the journey of three young university women who set out to emulate the river trip in Three Men in a Boat. They bring Cat called Tintoretto in the place of Montmorency. 


Fantasy author Harry Turtledove has written a set of stories where Jerome's characters encounter supernatural creatures: Three Men and a Vampire and Three Men and a Werewolf.


Science-fiction author Connie Willis paid tribute to Jerome's novel in her own 1997 Hugo Award-winning book To Say Nothing of the Dog. Her time-traveling protagonist also takes an ill-fated voyage on the Thames with two humans and a dog as companions, and encounters the protagonists of Jerome's novel.


Other books such as The Ascent of Rum Doodle, Have Space Suit-Will Travel, Three Men (Not) in a Boat: and Most of the Time Without a Dog (1989, republished 2011) are few more works of literature that are inspired by Jerome's novel.




About the Author

Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859-1927), was born in Walsall and moved to London with his family when he was still a young boy. His middle name was from a Hungarian friend of his father. Jerome belonged to a poor family and he left school at fourteen, after the death of his mother. Jerome started working as a railway clerk but due to his artistic nature, he started acting with various theatre companies - as well as reading literature in the British Museum library.


His experiences led him to make living as a writer. Three Men in a Boat brought him success and worldwide fame. The critics did not like Jerome's humor and carefree style of writing but his readers did, especially the clerking class. In America, it was sold illegally, nevertheless, sales reached a million.
 
He died at the age of 68 in Northhampton General Hospital.





Jerome K. Jerome (1989)


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Author: Jerome K. Jerome
Publisher: Create Space Independent Publishing Platform
Publishing Date: October 24, 2018
Language: English
Genre: Humorous Fiction, Classic Literature and Fiction, Political Humor
ISBN-10: 1512099899
ISBN-13: 978-1512099898
Pages: 102 
Cost: $5.67