Editing Three Men in a Boat (section)

{{Short description|1889 novel by Jerome K. Jerome}}
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{{EngvarB|date=September 2013}}
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{{Infobox book | <!-- See Wikipedia:WikiProject_Novels or Wikipedia:WikiProject_Books -->
| name         = Three Men in a Boat
| image   = Cover Jerome Three Men in a Boat First edition 1889.jpg
| caption      = 1889 edition cover
| author       = [[Jerome Klapka Jerome]]
| country      = United Kingdom
| language     = English
| genre        = [[Comedy novel]]
| publisher    = [[J. W. Arrowsmith]]
| release_date = 1889
| pages        = 
| isbn         = 0-7653-4161-1
| oclc         = 213830865
| followed_by  = [[Three Men on the Bummel]]
}}
'''''Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)''''',<ref group="Note">The Penguin edition punctuates the title differently: ''Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog!''</ref> published in 1889,<ref>{{cite book |last=Jerome |first=Jerome K. |title= Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)|publisher= J.W. Arrowsmith & Simpkin, Marshall & Co. |year= 1889 |place= Bristol & London |url= https://archive.org/stream/threemeninboatto00jerorich#page/n3/mode/2up |access-date= 10 April 2018 |via= Internet Archive}}</ref> is a humorous novel by English writer [[Jerome K. Jerome]] describing a two-week boating holiday on the [[River Thames|Thames]] from [[Kingston upon Thames]] to [[Oxford]] and back to Kingston. The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide,<ref name = "Lewis">Jeremy Lewis' introduction to the Penguin edition.</ref> 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]]. One of the most praised things about ''Three Men in a Boat'' is how undated it appears to modern readers – the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty.<ref name=harvey/>

The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. Jerome) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who would become a senior manager at [[Barclays Bank]]) and [[Carl Hentschel]] (the founder of a London printing business, called Harris in the book), with whom Jerome often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional<ref name = "Lewis" /> but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog".<ref name = "harvey">[[Geoffrey Harvey]] (1998). "Introduction", Oxford World's Classics edition of ''Three Men in a Boat; Three Men on the Bummel''.</ref> The trip is a typical boating holiday of the time in a [[Thames skiff|Thames camping skiff]].<ref group = "Note">The boat is called a ''double sculling skiff'' in the book – that is, a boat propelled by two people, each using a pair of one-handed oars ([[Sculling|''sculls'']]). A camping skiff is a boat with an easily erected canvas cover. This effectively turns the boat into a floating tent for overnight use.</ref>

Following the overwhelming success of ''Three Men in a Boat'', Jerome later published a sequel, about a cycling tour in Germany, titled ''[[Three Men on the Bummel]]'' (also known as ''Three Men on Wheels'', 1900).