Channelling a razor-sharp satire through the everyday mishaps of the
immortal comic character Mr Pooter, George and Weedon Grossmith's The
Diary of a Nobody is edited with an introduction and notes by Ed Glinert
in Penguin Classics. Mr Pooter is a man of modest ambitions, content
with his ordinary life. Yet he always seems to be troubled by
disagreeable tradesmen, impertinent young office clerks and wayward
friends, not to mention his devil-may-care son Lupin with his unsuitable
choice of bride. In the bumbling, absurd, yet ultimately endearing
character of Pooter, the Grossmith brothers created a wonderful portrait
of the class system and the inherent snobbishness of the suburban
middle-class suburbia - one which sends up the late Victorian crazes for
Aestheticism, spiritualism and bicycling, as well as the fashion for
publishing diaries by anybody and everybody. This edition contains the
original illustrations by Weedon Grossmith and an introduction by Ed
Glinert, author of The London Compendium, discussing the novel's
serialisation in Punch, the growth of the suburbs and the figure of Mrs
Pooter. George Grossmith (1847-1912) initially worked as a journalist,
reporting Police Court proceedings for The Times. In 1870 he began his
career as a singer and entertainer, creating some of the most memorable
characters in Gilbert and Sullivan's operettas. Weedon Grossmith
(1854-1919) brother of George, was educated at the Slade and the Royal
Academy with a view to following a career as a painter, and exhibited at
the Grosvenor Gallery and the Royal Academy. Joining a theatre company
in 1885, he toured the provinces and America. The best-known of his many
plays, The Night of the Party, was published in 1901. If you enjoyed The
Diary of a Nobody, you might like Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a
Boat, also available in Penguin Classics. 'The funniest book in the
world' Evelyn Waugh 'True humour ... with its mixture of absurdity,
irony and affection ... a masterpiece, immortal' J.B. Priestley
