Audiobook · read by volunteers
Diary of a Nobody
George Grossmith (1847–1912) · Weedon Grossmith (1854–1919)
Read by Martin Clifton · 25 chapters · 4 h 21
About the book
Charles Pooter is a London clerk with a pleasant villa in Holloway, a loyal wife, a lively son and an unshakeable belief that his daily life deserves to be written down. So he keeps a diary. In it we find his triumphs over a stubborn boot-scraper, his battles with tradesmen and his anxious efforts to rise in society. We also meet his friends, among them the cheerful Cummings and the over-familiar Gowing, and his son's unsuitable engagements and career troubles. Pooter takes every slight with solemn dignity, which is exactly what makes him so funny and, in the end, so likeable. Over fifteen months of entries the book builds a gentle comedy of manners, rich in period detail and full of mishaps that anyone who has suffered an embarrassing dinner party will recognise. Martin Clifton reads it in about four and a half hours, with a dry, affectionate touch that suits the pompous, kind-hearted diarist.
Introduction
The Diary of a Nobody was written by two brothers, George Grossmith (1847-1912) and Weedon Grossmith (1854-1919). George was a performer and comic writer; Weedon was a painter and illustrator. The work first appeared as a series in the humorous magazine Punch and was published as a book in 1892. It has remained in print ever since and is often counted among the classics of English comic writing.
Its great idea is the narrator. Charles Pooter is neither a fool nor a villain, only a very ordinary man with a little too much self-regard. The authors let him describe his own small humiliations without any comment, and the reader enjoys the gap between what he sees and what actually happens. Some have called it a kind of Victorian blog, since it records daily trifles in the first person. The setting is a lower-middle-class London suburb of about 1891, and the book captures its manners, its anxieties about status and its small pleasures.
This recording has 25 chapters, from a preface through the monthly entries, and lasts about 4.4 hours. It is read by one LibriVox volunteer, Martin Clifton.
Today the book is still funny because embarrassment and pretension have not changed. It is gentle, never cruel, and a perfect companion for a journey. Some readers like to hear it in a few sittings, a handful of chapters at a time, as the original magazine readers would have met it. The comedy builds through repetition, as Pooter's pride and his small disasters recur in new forms. The relaxed pace of the recording gives each entry room to land.
Public domain
George Grossmith died in 1912: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
Weedon Grossmith died in 1919: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text