Three Men in a Boat

Summary

Three hypochondriac young clerks and a fox terrier named Montmorency row a boat up the Thames from Kingston to Oxford, battling tinned pineapple, uncooperative tow lines, and their own laziness. Jerome intended a serious river guidebook but comic digressions took over, producing set pieces, like the struggle with the pineapple tin and Uncle Podger hanging a picture, that remain genuinely funny more than a century later. The book's easy conversational humor made it a template for modern comic writing.