About dogs, thieves, a policeman and other stories

Jerome Flap Jerome

English writer Jerome Klapka Jerome is undoubtedly one of the authors who are counted among the stalwarts of English humour. He was born in Walsall, England, on 2 May 1859, the fourth child of Marguerite Jones and Jerome Clapp (who later changed his name to Jerome Clapp Jerome, and his son was similarly registered). The middle name Klapka was given in honour of a family friend of Hungarian origin, General Klapka. His father had invested badly in the local mining industry, leaving the family in poverty and debt collectors at their door. He recounted these experiences in his biography My Life and Times. He loses his father at thirteen, his mother at fifteen, drops out of high school and starts to support himself. For four years he worked as a laborer for the railroad company. Then he had various jobs, he was a teacher, a packer, an actor. After three years he leaves the Coach Actors' Company and starts writing small essays and short humorous stories, but without much response. The real literary success came when Home Chimes magazine began publishing a follow-up account of the experiences of three paddlers on the River Thames. The series was published in book form under the title Three Men in a Boat (not to mention a dog). Ten years later, he is publishing a free sequel to Three Men on a Tour, inspired by a short stay in Germany. Later, his work begins to lose its light, carefree tone, and a major turning point comes after the outbreak of the First World War. Because of his age, he was not accepted as a volunteer in the army, so he started driving an ambulance for the French Red Cross. After the war he never wrote another humorous novel. In June 1927, on his way from Devon to London, he suffered a severe accident with a cerebral haemorrhage, to which he succumbed after a fortnight. Jerome Klapka Jerome has published a total of 13 novels, 12 collections, an autobiography, 15 anthologies containing his short stories, 9 self-published short stories and 9 plays.