About The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Unsurpassed as a work of literary and comic genius, Jerome K Jerome's Idle Thoughts is a wonderful set of essays detailing the author's view on a variety of topics, from babies and being hard up to cats and dogs, furnished apartments and being in love, as this extract shows: "Questions of taste were soon decided in those days. When a twelfth-century youth fell in love he did not take three paces backward, gaze into her eyes, and tell her she was too beautiful to live. He said he would step outside and see about it. And if, when he got out, he met a man and broke his head--the other man's head, I mean--then that proved that his--the first fellow's--girl was a pretty girl. But if the other fellow broke his head--not his own, you know, but the other fellow's--the other fellow to the second fellow, that is, because of course the other fellow would only be the other fellow to him, not the first fellow who--well, if he broke his head, then his girl--not the other fellow's, but the fellow who was the-- Look here, if A broke B's head, then A's girl was a pretty girl; but if B broke A's head, then A's girl wasn't a pretty girl, but B's girl was. That was their method of conducting art criticism. Nowadays we light a pipe and let the girls fight it out among themselves."

About Jerome K Jerome

On leaving school at the age of fourteen, Jerome Klapka Jerome started out as a clerk at Euston Railway Station. He became an actor, but also tried his hand at teaching and journalism, his early humorous pieces becoming quite popular. His first books to be published were On the stage and off (1885) and Idle thoughts of an idle fellow (1886). Three years later his most famous work came with the story of a rowing holiday on the River Thames, Three men in a boat. From 1892 he edited and contributed to magazines such as The idler and a weekly magazine called To-day, but he was forced to sell his interests in 1897 following an expensive libel action. He now concentrated on the theatre and one of his best plays, modelled on J.M. Barrie, is The passing of the third floor back (1907). more

Praise

"A little comic masterpiece." The Independent

'Published in 1886, still relevant, still devilishly funny.' -- Tom Hodgkinson