The Diary of a Nobody

by Weedon Grossmith, George Grossmith, Mike George Jr., et al.

Book Overview

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, home improvements, and his relationship with a troublesome son. The small minded but essentially decent suburban world he inhabits is both hilarious and painfully familiar. This edition features Weedon Grossmith's...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0192833278
• ISBN13: 9780192833273
• Release Date: October 1998
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 176 Pages
• Weight: 0.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 7.4" x 4.9"

Customer Reviews

Very funny read

I downloaded this book because it was free, not really expecting much from it. However, I'm glad I chose to read it because from the very beginning, it had me laughing. The main character just can't win: no matter what good fortune he has (which is very little) something hilarious always happens to ruin it for him. I really enjoyed reading this book and would recommend it to anyone looking for a good read.

Pure pleasure

This book is a riot from start to finish. Read one page and you'll see why this is such a beloved classic of dry humor.

Laughed

I laughed till the bed shook

Thoroughly Entertaining

The 'Nobody' of the title is one Charles Pooter, an ordinary middle-class Londoner in the late 19th century who reasons that if Pepys and Johnson can write diaries to entertain people, why should his diary be any less exciting? And so we are amused by such characters as Pooter's unpredictable son Lupin, his good friends Cumming and Gowing, and not least Pooter himself, whose most fascinating and hilarious trait is his tendency to write people off as lacking in humour when they fail to laugh at his occasional pun, whilst exhibiting a distinct lack of humour himself when it comes to some of the more trivial aspects of life.Pooter's descriptions of the mundane, as well as the occasionally unusual, happenings of daily life are told in extraordinary detail, which brings a real vividness to some of the amusing predicaments our friend finds himself in. And he really is our friend by the end of the book. There is a certain air of pathos about this man that proves quite endearing. His Victorian prudery and sensibility provokes much laughter (reading this on the train to London, I had to put it down a couple of times to avoid drawing attention to myself), yet also provokes a certain affection for a character who is as tragic as he is admirable. That is, despite some of his more pathetic idionsyncracies, the warmth and genuineness of his character shine through.

An Evergreen Comic Masterpiece.

This book must be the most nearly perfect piece of comic writing in English, its humour gentle and subtle, its depiction of character, class, time and location flawless. It fixes forever the late-Victorian world of the respectable Lower Middle Class, populated by clerks, petty merchants and tradesmen, observing it with both objectivity and affection. It is splendidly read on tape by Frederick Davidson, whose assumed accent is perfectly gauged to reflect the upwardly-mobile aspirations of the Mr.Charles Pooter, the self-confessed nobody of the title, and which slips down the social scale by several notches in moments of stress and frustration. Though superficially simple, the construction of the narrative is complex in the extreme, with comic situations often being built up over a long period, and with clues carefully planted in earlier sections, only to come to fruition later. It is particularly impressive how the main characters - Pooter himself, his long-suffering and often silly but supportive wife Carrie and his exasperating son Lupin - emerge as rounded characters from apparently simple diary entries and achieve a realism and familiarity as great as any in more serious literature. The situations in which they find themselves - or rather get themselves - are not only ludicrously amusing, but also close to the normality of life as many live it, and one can often, uncomfortably, recognise one's self or one's friends in their reactions to them. What makes the Diary an enduring masterpiece is however the gentle and affectionate treatment of human weakness - and greatness. Pooter may be pompous, foolish and sometimes sycophantic, but he is also loyal, decent and honourable and his life, and his family's, for all its pettiness, also has its dignity. I first read the Diary over forty years ago and it has never ceased to delight me since - it remains a treasured bedside book to be opened at random - and this splendid tape of it is an ideal companion for long or short automobile journeys. (An interesting footnote is that George Grossmith, as a singer and actor, created many of the best known Gilbert and Sullivan roles on stage).