Three Men in a Boat 1891, "Three Women in One Boat: A River Sketch" by Constance MacEwen was published. This book relates the journey of three young university women who set out to emulate the river trip in "Three Men in a Boat" in an effort to raise the spirits of one of them, who is about to be expelled from university. To take the place of Montmorency, they bring a cat called Tintoretto. Three Men in a Boat is referenced in the 1956 parody novel on mountaineering, "The Ascent of Rum Doodle", where the head porter Bing is said to spend "much of his
Three Men in a Boat describes passing landmarks and villages such as Hampton Court Palace, Hampton Church, Magna Carta Island and Monkey Island, and muses on historical associations of these places. However, he frequently digresses into humorous anecdotes that range from the unreliability of barometers for weather forecasting to the difficulties encountered when learning to play the Scottish bagpipes. The most frequent topics of J.'s anecdotes are river pastimes such as fishing and boating and the difficulties they present to the inexperienced and unwary and to the three men on previous boating trips. The book includes classic comedy set pieces, such as the Plaster of