Three Men in A Boat - Reception and History

Reception and History

One might have imagined … that the British Empire was in danger. … The Standard spoke of me as a menace to English letters; and The Morning Post as an example of the sad results to be expected from the over-education of the lower orders. … I think I may claim to have been, for the first twenty years of my career, the best abused author in England. —Jerome K Jerome, My Life and Times (1926)

The reception by critics varied between lukewarm and hostile. The use of slang was condemned as "vulgar" and the book was derided as written to appeal to " 'Arrys and 'Arriets" - then common sneering terms for working-class Londoners who dropped their Hs when speaking. Punch magazine dubbed Jerome " 'Arry K. 'Arry". Modern commentators have praised the humour, but criticized the book's unevenness as the humorous sections are interspersed with more serious passages written in a sentimental, sometimes purple, style.

Yet the book sold in huge numbers. "I pay Jerome so much in royalties," the publisher told a friend, "I cannot imagine what becomes of all the copies of that book I issue. I often think the public must eat them." The first edition was published in August 1889 and serialised in the popular magazine Home Chimes in the same year. The first edition remained in print from 1889 until March 1909, when the second edition was issued. During that time, 202,000 copies were sold. Jerome states in the author's introduction to the 1909 second edition, he'd been told another million copies had been sold in America by pirate printers. The book was translated into many languages. The Russian edition was particularly successful and became a standard school textbook. Jerome later complained in a letter to The Times of Russian books not written by him, published under his name in order to benefit from his success. Since its publication, Three Men in a Boat has never been out of print. It continues to be popular to the current day, with The Guardian ranking it #33 on The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time in 2003, and Esquire ranking it #2 in the 50 Funniest Books Ever in 2009. in 2003, the book was listed on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

The river trip is easy to re-create, following the detailed description, and this is sometimes done by fans of the book. Much of the route remains unchanged. For example, all the pubs and inns named are still open. A re-creation in 1993 by poet Kim Taplin and companions resulted in the travelogue Three Women in a Boat The book was also referenced in the 1956 parody novel on mountaineering, The Ascent of Rum Doodle, where the head porter Bing is said to spend "much of his leisure immersed in a Yogistani translation of Three men in a boat". In Have Space Suit—Will Travel, by Robert A. Heinlein, the main character's father is an obsessive fan of the book, and spends much of his spare time repeatedly re-reading it.

Science-fiction author Connie Willis paid tribute to Jerome's novel in her own 1997 Hugo Award-winning book To Say Nothing of the Dog. Her time-travelling protagonist also takes an ill-fated voyage on the Thames with two humans and a dog as companions, and encounters George, Harris, 'J' and Montmorency. The title of Willis' novel refers to the full title of the original book, "Three Men in a Boat - To Say Nothing of the Dog!". This story ends telling that one should be witty as well as should have a sense of humour where necessary