George and Weedon Goldsmith's creation of the utterly pedestrian and irredeemably middle-class bank clerk 'Henry Pooter' is a work of comic genius. "Why should I not publish my diary?" Pooter asks at the start of the book, and the answer becomes blindingly, hilariously clear as he proceeds to detail the unremitting tedium of his life in all its hum-drum detail: straightening a Venetian blind, nailing down a loose carpet corner, or describing his trifling battles with 'tradesmen'. It is the authors' achievement that this litany of dull dreariness leaves the reader in stitches, and with a...

Special Large Print edition, with easy to read text, of George and Weedon Grossmith's classic work.

Mr Charles Pooter has just moved into a home in Holloway with his dear wife Carrie. Unfortunately neither his 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.

Mr Pooter is a man of modest ambition and content with his lot. So why is he always in trouble with tradesmen, colleagues and friends? However hard he tries life always seems to pile mishaps onto him - but he's not about to give up.

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury.

The Diary of a Nobody is so unassuming a work that even its author, George Grossmith, seemed unaware that he had produced a masterpiece. For more than a century this wonderfully comic portrayal of suburban life and values has remained in print, a source of delight to generations of readers, and a major literary influence, much imitated but never equalled.

If you don't recognise yourself at some point in The Diary you are...