Idle Ideas in 1905

Idle Ideas in 1905 is a collection of comic essays by Jerome K. Jerome, published in 1905. The collection extends Jerome’s substantial body of essay writing that had begun with Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow in 1886 and continued through Second Thoughts of an Idle Fellow in 1898 and the various other essay collections that he produced across his career.

The Idle Ideas essays work in the loose conversational mode that Jerome had developed for his essay writing. Each essay takes a small subject from ordinary contemporary life and lets Jerome talk around it for a few thousand words. The format does not require sustained argument or careful conclusion. Jerome simply works through whatever observations occur to him about the subject in question, with the comic timing that defined all his best work.

The specific subjects covered include various aspects of early-twentieth-century English domestic and social life. There are essays on the difficulty of getting servants to do what one wants, on the various small absurdities of the English railway system, on the relations between husbands and wives, on the difficulty of writing a successful book, on the various comic incidents of country house weekends, and on the broader cultural and social changes that were transforming Edwardian England.

Jerome was writing in 1905 as an established literary figure who had been one of the most successful English comic writers for nearly two decades. Three Men in a Boat had appeared in 1889 and had remained continuously in print. Three Men on the Bummel had followed in 1900. The various essay collections had been steady commercial successes throughout the 1890s and 1900s. He had also produced more serious work including the play The Passing of the Third Floor Back and the autobiographical novel Paul Kelver. The Idle Ideas collection continued the comic essay strand that was the most reliable element of his commercial career.

The collection runs about three hundred pages and is best read piece by piece across an extended period rather than straight through. The essays are short enough to read in fifteen minutes each and work as bedtime or commuting reading. For readers who liked Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, this is the natural continuation. It pairs with the other essay collections and with the broader Jerome comic catalogue.