4 h 46 minAudiobook7 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if doing nothing only feels good when you have something else to do?
In The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, Jerome K. Jerome turns his own faults into friendly company. These comic essays explore being idle, falling in love, running short of money, and feeling shy. He chats like a friend across a table, laughing at his plans and slipping into small stories.
On Being Idle asks what makes leisure sweet, while On Being in Love finds comedy in youthful passion. On Being in the Blues explores low spirits without a clear cause. Through vanity, rented rooms, babies, and everyday worries, Jerome keeps a sharp eye on the gap between how people see themselves and how they behave.
What you’ll discover
- The pleasure of idling Explore why doing nothing gains its sweetness from the work waiting nearby.
- Love with a grin Follow Jerome as he laughs at youthful passion and the foolishness it brings.
- Vanity caught in view On Vanity and Vanities finds comic pride even in people who deny having it.
- Domestic life runs loose Meet babies, pets, and landladies in essays about the small world of home.
- A friend across the table Enjoy a voice that admits its faults and makes room for your own.
Who will love it
For readers who love gentle, chatty humour, short pieces to dip into, and a glimpse of Victorian daily life, with self-mocking jokes about love, money troubles and shyness.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Idling is sweet only beside work
- Love is a fever we all catch
- Low spirits and empty pockets breed humour
- Vanity, shyness and dress expose us
- Home life brings babies, pets and landladies
- Small jokes that point to Three Men
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- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Die müßigen Gedanken eines Müßiggängers
by Jerome K. Jerome · 1886
Jerome laughs at his own faults and finds in love, empty pockets and rented rooms a lighter way to face everyday life.
Medium level2–5 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow is a book of comic essays by Jerome K. Jerome, the English writer who later became loved for Three Men in a Boat.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
Idling is sweet only beside work
The opening essay, On Being Idle, sets the tone. Jerome claims that idleness is not simply doing nothing. It is a pleasure that needs a background of duty to show it off. A man with no work cannot enjoy a lazy afternoon, because he has nothing to escape from.
He backs this up with his own habits. He describes how he can stare out of a window or lie on a sofa with a deep sense of joy, but only when pressing tasks wait for him somewhere else. Once the tasks are done, the joy drains away and he feels merely bored. The lazy hour is a stolen hour, and stolen goods taste better.
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What is The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow about?
It is a collection of humorous essays on everyday topics such as idleness, love, low spirits, money troubles, shyness, babies, pets and lodgings. Jerome K. Jerome writes in a chatty voice and laughs mostly at himself.
When was The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow written?
The essays first appeared in a magazine called Home Chimes and were gathered into a book in 1886. Jerome was a young writer at the time, trying to earn a living by his pen.
Is The Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow related to Three Men in a Boat?
They are separate books by the same author, but they share a style. The rambling, self-mocking voice here appears again in Three Men in a Boat, published a few years later in 1889.
The author
Jerome K. Jerome
1859–1927 · English humorist
Jerome K. Jerome was an English writer and humorist whose Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog), the account of a bumbling boating holiday on the Thames, has never been out of print since it appeared in 1889.
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