My Life and Times

Step behind the curtain with the master of British humor. Discover the real-life story of the man who wrote Three Men in a Boat. Published in 1926, just a year before his passing, My Life and Times is the definitive autobiography of Jerome K. Jerome. Written with the same effortless, conversational irony and warm observational wit that defined his legendary career, this volume offers a captivating, first-hand look into the literary and social circles of the Victorian and Edwardian eras. Jerome's path to international stardom was anything but easy. With remarkable candor, he describes his childhood wrestling with intense religious fundamentalism and the grinding East End poverty that forced him to leave school at a young age to support himself. Before Three Men in a Boat made him a household name, Jerome survived as a railway clerk, a penniless actor, a teacher, and a struggling journalist, jotting down dialogue under street lamps while suspicious policemen watched on. Beyond the brilliant, name-dropping anecdotes of London's theater and literary elites, My Life and Times reveals a man of immense principle and profound empathy. Jerome details his lecture tours in a rapidly changing turn-of-the-century America - including his brave, public condemnation of racial injustice in the South - and his harrowing World War I service as a volunteer ambulance driver for the French Army when the British military deemed him too old to serve. My Life and Times is an essential, deeply comforting read for anyone who has ever laughed along with Jerome's fiction. Part episodic comedy, part historical time capsule, and part intimate memoir, this hidden gem proves that the real life of the "Idle Fellow" was every bit as fascinating, noble, and wonderfully human as the classic stories he left behind.