Originally intended as a serious travel guide, Three Men in a Boat is based on an actual holiday Jerome took along the Thames River with two real life friends, George Wingrave and Carl Hentschel. Perhaps the English author's best-known work, Jerome's book remains as fresh and witty as it was when first written. The jokes are still funny and the local history Jerome writes about on this trip between Kingston and Oxford makes it a valued travelogue today. Many fans of Jerome use Three Men in a Boat to recreate the trip, since the route remains virtually unchanged and all the pubs and inns named in the book are still open a century later.