A. K. Prabhat

Three Men in a Boat is generally accepted as a work of humour due to the amusing anecdotes the three men relate during their trip up the Thames. However, author Jerome K. Jerome originally intended the book to be a travel guide for tourists participating in the then-popular activity of leisure boating. Though the book did serve as a useful travel guide—and, in fact, still does, as many of the inns and pubs named in the work are still open—the timeless humour of Jerome's writing and the extreme popularity of the book in Great Britain transformed it into an important piece of popular culture as well.