"Three Men in A Boat, published in 1889, is a humorous account by English writer Jerome K. Jerome of a two-week boating holiday on the Thames from Kingston upon Thames to Oxford and back to Kingston.
The book was initially intended to be a serious travel guide, with accounts of local history along the route, but the humorous elements took over to the point where the serious and somewhat sentimental passages seemed a distraction from the comic novel.
One of the most praised things about Three Men in a Boat is how undated it appears to modern readers—the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty."