George Grossmith

In it the Grossmith brothers not only created an immortal comic character but produced a clever satire of their society. The diary is a wonderful portrait of the class system and the inherent snobbishness of the suburban middle classes. It sends up contemporary crazes for Aestheticism, spiritualism and bicycling, as well as the fashion for publishing diaries by anybody and everybody.

Mr Charles Pooter is a respectable man. He has just moved into a very desirable home in Holloway with his dear wife Carrie, from where he commutes to his job of valued clerk at a reputable bank in the City. Unfortunately neither his dear friends Mr Cummings and Mr Gowing, nor the butcher, the greengrocer's boy and the Lord Mayor seem to recognise Mr Pooter's innate gentility, and his disappointing son Lupin has gone and got himself involved with a most unsuitable fiancee... George and Weedon Grossmith's comic novel, perfectly illustrated by Weedon, is a glorious, affectionate caricature of the English middle-class at the end of nineteenth century.

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's unsuitable choice of bride. Try as he might, he cannot avoid life's embarrassing mishaps. In the bumbling, absurd yet ultimately endearing figure of Pooter, the Grossmiths created an immortal comic character and a superb satire on the snobberies of middle-class suburbia - one which also sends up late Victorian crazes for Aestheticism, spiritualism and bicycling, as well as the fashion for publishing diaries by anybody and everybody.

El Diario de un don nadie es uno de los grandes clásicos de la literatura humorística británica, y resulta bastante sorprendente, dada la influencia que tuvo en la literatura posterior, que no existiera una edición en nuestra lengua. El narrador y protagonista del libro, Charles Pooter, es un personaje gris con aspiraciones a entrar en la alta sociedad, de la que imita todo lo que está a su alcance, y al mismo tiempo es un pobre hombre perseguido por la mala suerte. De sus controversias y conflictos con el servicio, su esposa y su joven y díscolo sobrino surgen algunas de las escenas más divertidas de un libro que mantiene al lector con una sonrisa a lo largo de toda la lectura. Humor británico del bueno.