Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)
Bristol; London: J. W. Arrowsmith; Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1889.
First edition, third state. [vi], 315, [3] pp. with three advertising pages at rear. Bound in publisher's green cloth stamped in gilt on spine and black on front boards, advertisements printed on pastedowns. Very Good with slant to spine, light soiling and moderate rubbing to covers, and scattered foxing and dust-soiling to textblock edges. Front hinge strengthened, offsetting to free endpapers, and light toning to contents. Previous owner signature in an old hand to title page.
Identified by Rogers and Read as third state on the following points: "11 Quay Street, Bristol" at head of front pastedown advertisement; "J. W. Arrowsmith, Quay Street" on title page; ornamental initial ‘T’ on p.1 undamaged; moon in illustration on p. 20; ornamental initials on pp. 77 and 95 are not inverted; the word ‘stream’ is present at the end of p. 27.
Jerome K. Jerome's comic account of an ill-fated boating trip with two friends (and a dog) was first serialized in the weekly magazine Home Chimes. His combination of wit and slapstick, bound up in clean modern prose, made the first trade publication a great success. The book has never been out of print, and it inspired the science fiction writer Connie Willis' homage To Say Nothing of the Dog, which won the 1999 Hugo and Locus awards.
Price: $450