The Diary of a Nobody (Oxford World's Classics) Book

Mr Charles Pooter is a man of modest ambition, quite content with his employment as a city clerk. He is also a man whose pomposity reaches higher than the average Victorian top hat, which could well be the reason he is always mysteriously in trouble with disagreeable tradesmen, impudent young clerks, wayward friends and uncontrollable family members bent on finding marriage partners in the most unsuitable of places. However hard Mr Pooter tries, life continues to heap trouble and strife on his head. Luckily for the reading public, Mr Pooter is not one to give up lightly. Realising that he has often seen the reminiscences of people he has never heard of lining the shelves of bookshops, Mr Pooter decides that he too shall keep a diary since, even if he is technically unknown, why shouldn't his life be as interesting as everyone else's. The resulting Diary of a Nobody proves to be a side-splitting collection of mundane mishaps and misunderstandings as the tragically deluded, self-important Mr Pooter struggles to compete with the more exciting friends, relatives and even complete strangers who come to dominate his journal. In the bumbling, absurd yet still strangely endearing Charles Pooter, George and Weedon Grossmith have brought to life one of the greatest comic creations in English literature. The Diary of a Nobody is a biting, hilarious satire of English suburban values that has lost none of its sparkle more than a hundred years after it was initially published. Those who enjoy The Diary of a Nobody should be sure to pick up a copy of another great satire of the same period, Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a Boat.

Charles Pooter cannot understand why he shouldn't publish his diary, even though he does not happen to be a 'somebody', he wonders why his diary shouldn't be interesting? A classic character from 1892, Charles is anxious, accident prone and occasionally waspish. His diary chronicles his encounters with difficult tradesmen, the delights of home improvements, small parties, minor embarassments and problems with his troublesome son. The suburban world he inhabits is hilariously and painfully familiar in its small-mindedness and essential decency. George and Weedon Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody created a cultural icon and an English archetype that has often been imitated, but never bettered.

Weedon Grossmith's 1892 book presents the details of English suburban life through the anxious and accident-prone character of Charles Porter. Porter's diary chronicles his daily routine, which includes small parties, minor embarrassments...