Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog). by Jerome, Jerome K - 1889

Bristol: J. W. Arrowsmith, 1889. First edition, first state of Jerome's humorous account of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames. Octavo, original cloth, illustrated by A. Frederics. First state with 'Quay Street' (no address number 11) to the title page. In very good condition. First published in 1889, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat is a humorous account of 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 to the comic novel. The book continues to be praised for how undated it appears to modern readers and following its overwhelming success, Jerome published a sequel about a cycling tour in Germany, titled Three Men on the Bummel.