1. “I like work; it fascinates me. I can sit and look
at it for hours.”-Jerome K. Jerome

2. Jerome’s Ambitions
English Literary Writer, Novelist, Actor, and Screenwriter
Jerome K. Jerome once confided that he wanted to
accomplish four ambitions in his life. These ambitions were
to do the following:
1. To edit a successful journal
2. To write a successful play,
3. To write a successful book
4. To become a member of English Parliament.
Out of all four of these ambitions, Jerome only
accomplished three. He never made it to Parliament.

3. The Journey Starts Here… in Theatre
Jerome’s start into the Arts and Literature started as an actor
inspired by his sister’s, Blandina, love of theatre in 1877.
 He would begin his career with a repertory troupe that
toured the country under the stage name of “Harold
Critchon”.
 With meager resources, he would also produce low budget
plays.
 He would work in the theatre for three years and then walk
away at age 21.

4. On the Stage- and Off, The Brief
Career of a Would Be Actor
After a succession of rejections from his attempts of satires, essays,
and short stories… Jerome would make a successful return to
theatre.
 Inspired by Longfellow’s poem “By The Fireside” (which
curiously had the title of Gaspar Becerra). The poem would
inspire Jerome to write a play based off his acting experiences.
 The play, entitled “On the Stage- and Off, The Brief Career of a
Would Be Actor” would be a success in two ways, both
Theatrically and Literary.

5.  Along with being an Acting success, the play
would receive critically acclaim from a
magazine named, The Play.
 In 1885, the play would be placed in Book
form.
 According to a Society established in his name
years after his death, the Jerome K. Jerome
Society, it is still “one of the most detailed,
absorbing (and under-rated) portraits of late-
Victorian theatre life.”

6. IDLE THOUGHTS OF AN IDLE FELLOW
After the success of On The Stage…, Jerome would follow
up with a collection of essays entitled, “Idle Thoughts of an
Idle Fellow”. Described by Robert Wringham, a writer
from HiBrow.com, he says about this work:
(The Book is) “a collection of gentle and naughty essays
on the subject of idling and related topics (including
love, melancholia, poverty, deportment, and aspiration – or
rather one’s lack of it), is something of an inadvertent
manifesto against today’s tiresome inclination toward
workaholic and the general sense of tedium vitae that
comes with office life and daily commutes.”

7. “The Comic Masterpiece”
Shortly after returning from his honeymoon with his new wife,
Georgina Elizabeth Henrietta Stanley Marris (Ettie), Jerome would
begin work on his comic masterpiece called, Three Men and a Boat,
released in 1889.
 It would become the book that would make him rich and famous.
 Jerome would use actual events and would based the characters on
himself and two of his close friends, George Wingrave and Carl
Hentschel. (George, Harris, and J)
 The book would chronicle the three’s adventures up and down the
river Thames.
 The success of the book would spawn a sequel in 1900 and would
be the final appearance for the three in the book “Three Men on a
Bummel” (Three Men on a Wheel in America).

8. Two Literary Publications Founded
• In 1892 and 1893, Jerome would help find two
London Literary Publications. He would co-found the
1892 publication “The Idler” (with good friend and
fellow humorist Robert Barr) and then the 1893 Co-
Weekly “To-day”.
• Jerome, now well connected, teamed with such
writers such as Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
and Rudyard Kipling.
• The publications would lampoon Victorian Values
with Cartoons, Essays, and Anecdotal tales.

9. Finally… Success Achieved…
Five years after the 1902 publication of his
autographical novel, Paul Kelver, Jerome’s success
would finally pay off.
O He would be invited to do lectures across the United States
and even Russia.
O He would then write the famous morality play, The
Passing of the Third Floor Back, a play about a Christ-
Like stranger’s visiting a rundown boarding
house, changing the lives of the inhabitants, in 1907.
O The play would become successful only after people would
become adjusted to Jerome’s style of delivery with his
uncharacteristic moral tone.

10. JEROME’S
AUTOBIOGRAPHY
In 1926, Jerome would publish his autobiography, My Life and
Times, to which his society has remarked that it he would not go in
any chronological order and was frustratingly short on details,
however, it would contain some of the most vital points of Jerome’s
life.

11. KNIGHTHOOD AND DEATH
On February 17, 1927, he would go to Belsize, the
place of his birth, to see a tablet grace the place of
his birth and to be honored to receive the title of
Freeman of the Borough of Walsall in the Town
Hall, and given a dinner.
 A few months later on June 14, 1927, he died in
Northampton, England after suffering a series of
strokes.

12. Closing…
Jerome K. Jerome, as said earlier, wanted to accomplish
four ambitions. Now, as seen, he never made it to
British Parliament, but he did have a success at the other
three. His Autobiography My Life and Times, His
successful play The Passing of the Third Floor Back,
and his novel and masterpiece, Three Men and a Boat
lived to be extremely successful.