Product Description

Mr Charles Pooter is a well-meaning city clerk and one of a growing number of upwardly mobile, lower middle-class suburbanites set on improving their social standing. Aspiring to posterity, he embarks on a diary in which he is actively drawn into petty confrontations, including run-ins with idle tradesmen, insolent office juniors and abusive neighbours; while simultaneously dealing with his wife's heedless indulgence in flights of fashion and the reckless antics of his vagabond son Lupin.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #154740 in Books
• Published on: 2001-04-12
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 194 pages

About the Author
Kate Flint is is Reader in Victorian and Modern English Literature and Fellow of Linacre College, Oxford. Her publications include The Woman Reader, 1837-1914 (1993) and many articles on early nineteenth and twentieth century fiction and art history.

Customer Reviews

Diary of a Nobody - What a gem!
If you want to know whether or not to pay £1.50 for this book, I say; don't be a chump, stump up the cash and prepare for an intriguing insight into a glimpse of the early 1900s.

This is a gem of a book that is greatly unknown to the masses, yet has so much social commentary, that it says more to me than many other books that reflect the fin de siecle. written from the point of view of a clerk, aspiring to greater things, this book entertains and amuses, whilst providing a glimps of the Post-Victorian era.

I felt that this book flowed more easily and didn't have any pretensions or wordiness that many of the author's contemporaries suffered from. In essence, this book has as much to say today about social insecurities and aspirations, as it did when it was written. Go on, buy it, impress your friends with having read a masterpiece that they'll probably never have heard of. I got my brother and best friend to read it and they've now spread theword... this is a bloody excellent read!

A pleasant read
The Diary of a Nobody tells in diary form the story of a certain Mr Pooter, clerk by profession and a man of no importance or interest. He is somewhat pompous, dull, and stuffy, with pretensions towards gentility but lacking in social skills and self-awareness. He is quite a ridiculous figure, and one who is taken advantage of by many who he is pleased to call his friends, and mocked by his juniors at work. Additionally, all tradesmen are his nemeses. As he sets this down in his diary, however, Mr. Pooter is often oblivious to his own foolishness and to the impression he creates in others, including the reader.

Mr. Pooter's son Lupin is the main source of incident in his father's life. He is a youth of high spirits and little respect for his elders, including his father. Lupin undertakes a love affair with a young lady called Daisy Mutlar; he is desperately in love with this young lady , who seems to Mr. Pooter to be of no remarkable attraction or accomplishments. Concurrent with this torrid affair, Lupin finds and loses several jobs, joins an amateur dramatics club and speculates on the stock exchange with his father's money.

Though over 100 years old, this book is still funny for the modern reader. It was written with the contemporary audience in mind but the humour has not dated. As another reviewer noted, Mr Pooter is something of a 19th century David Brent.The style is notably uncluttered and unaffected. It is a short book(145 pages approx. in this edition) and extremely readable. From a relatively uneventful start, it gathers momentum with the arrival of Lupin. Pooter's character broadens somewhat to become a decent everyman, though none the less ridiculous for that. This book ends long before the reader has had enough of the bumbling central character, and is a very pleasant, undemanding read.

Fantastic!
This is one of the funniest books I've ever read. I wish another one would have been written! I always read it when I feel a bit downhearted. A great insight into the life of people in those times - and how little has changed with regard to a son's attitude to his Dad!!! It was totally my sense of humour.