Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) was an English writer and humorist, best remembered for his comic masterpiece Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog) (1889). Born in Walsall, Staffordshire, Jerome endured early poverty after his family's iron business collapsed, working as a railway clerk, schoolteacher, and actor before finding his voice in journalism and fiction.
Three Men in a Boat, originally conceived as a serious travel guide, became a hilarious chronicle of a Thames boating holiday shared by three friends and a fox terrier named Montmorency. Its wit has kept it continuously in print for more than a century. Jerome followed with the sequel Three Men on the Bummel (1900), a comic tour of Germany.
His other significant works include The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886), a collection of humorous essays; the autobiographical novel Paul Kelver (1902); the popular play The Passing of the Third Floor Back (1907); and My Life and Times (1926). During World War I, he served with the French Red Cross. Jerome died in 1927, remembered as one of the most beloved humorists of the Victorian and Edwardian eras.