Jerome Klapka Jerome, son of Jerome Clapp Jerome, began his working life as a railway clerk at the age of fourteen.

Successively assistant schoolmaster, clerk, actor and journalist, his first novel, On Stage and Off, was published in 1888, followed by The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow in 1889, his first literary success.

That same year, he published his most famous novel: Three Men In A Boat