Staff Pick
I was hooked on Three Men in a Boat from its opening sentence: "There were four of us." Yes, it was written in the 19th century, but it's still so fresh that a teenager who read the book at my recommendation enthused, "I didn't know that old-timey people could be so funny!" Highly recommended. Recommended By Bart K., Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
Wordsworth Classics covers a huge list of beloved works of literature in English and translations. This growing series is rigorously updated, with scholarly introductions and notes added to new titles.
Synopsis
Introduced and Annotated by Cedric Watts, M.A., Ph.D., Emeritus Professor of English, University of Sussex.
Three Men in a Boat is a comic classic. When it first appeared in 1889 it became a best seller, and has remained popular ever since. This motley novel has not only been translated into many languages but has also been staged, filmed, televised and imitated. The adventures and misfortunes on the Thames of the three English friends and their pugnacious dog, Montmorency, provide rich humour, shrewd observations, lyrical reflections, and, predominantly, genially ironic perceptions of human fallibility.
The sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, reunites the three friends for their 'Bummel' ('roaming or wandering') through Germany. The results vary from the seductively titillating to the outrageously farcical; and subsequent history has laden the narrative with ironies.