Free Chairs Book

I think Jerome K. Jerome (curious name) is somewhat misrepresented as a humour author. His essays are certainly readable, and there's frequent humour ("He listened to me in rapt ecstasy. I might have been music.") but he's often capable of serious thoughtful comments about our habits and society in general: "Will it matter to the ages whether, once upon a time, the Union Jack or the Tricolour floated over the battlements of Badajoz? Yet we poured our blood into its ditches to decide the question... Why, if the universe be ordered by a Creator to whom all things are possible, the protoplasmic cell? Why not the man that is to be? Shall all generations be so much human waste that he may live? Am I but another layer of the soil preparing for him? ... Looking back the little distance that our dim eyes can penetrate the past, what do we find? Civilizations, built up with infinite care, swept aside and lost."

This book (and the first, Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow) certainly aren't all this serious, but the fact that he can weave together an easygoing intelligence, humour and impressive observations make him as thoroughly enjoyable as he is worthy of your time. At one point a "put out the stars" reference seemed to me to be the inspiration for the famous W.H Auden poem, Funeral Blues. Based on these, I'm looking forward to another non-fiction title of his, Diary of a Pilgrimage.