Three Men in a Boat, published in 1889, became an instant success and has never been out of print. In its first twenty years alone, the book sold over a million copies worldwide. It has been adapted to films, TV, and radio shows, stage plays, and a musical, and influenced subsequent writers such as P. G. Wodehouse, James Thurber, and Nick Hornby. It ranks among The Guardian's top one hundred best English novels of all time. Jerome's light comic prose overtook what was intended as a series of magazine articles about the scenery and history of the Thames and became instead a humorous travelogue of a two-week boating holiday amongst three friends and the narrator's dog,