Three Men in a Boat Boat" is how undated it appears to modern readers – the jokes have been praised as fresh and witty. The three men are based on Jerome himself (the narrator Jerome K. Jerome) and two real-life friends, George Wingrave (who would become a senior manager at Barclays Bank) and Carl Hentschel (the founder of a London printing business, called Harris in the book), with whom Jerome often took boating trips. The dog, Montmorency, is entirely fictional but, "as Jerome admits, developed out of that area of inner consciousness which, in all Englishmen, contains an element of the dog". The trip is
Three Men in a Boat pirate printers. The book was translated into many languages. The Russian edition was particularly successful and became a standard school textbook. Jerome later complained in a letter to "The Times" of Russian books not written by him, published under his name to benefit from his success. Since its publication, "Three Men in a Boat" has never been out of print. It continues to be popular, with "The Guardian" ranking it No. 33 of "The 100 Greatest Novels of All Time" in 2003, and no. 25 in 2015 and "Esquire" ranking it No. 2 in the "50 Funniest Books Ever" in