Diary of a Nobody

Channelling a razor-sharp satire through the everyday mishaps of the immortal comic character Mr Pooter, George and Weedon. Grossmith's The Diary of a Nobody is edited with an introduction and notes by Ed Glinert in "Penguin Classics". Mr Pooter is a man of modest ambitions, content with his ordinary life. Yet he always seems to be troubled by disagreeable tradesmen, impertinent young office clerks and wayward friends, not to mention his devil-may-care son Lupin with his unsuitable choice of bride. In the bumbling, absurd, yet ultimately endearing character of Pooter, the Grossmith brothers created a wonderful portrait of the class system and the inherent snobbishness of the suburban middle-class suburbia - one which sends up the late Victorian crazes for Aestheticism, spiritualism and bicycling, as well as the fashion for publishing diaries by anybody and everybody.