John Ingerfield, and Other Stories

Here is Jerome K. Jerome without a joke in sight. Best known for making the world laugh with Three Men in a Boat, the author turns his sharp eye inward to explore what happens when wealth accumulates but the soul starves. The title novella follows John Ingerfield, an oil and tallow refiner in London who pursues practical success so relentlessly that he forgets to pursue anything else. He marries Anne Singleton through arrangement rather than passion, and the two inhabit a house of comfort without warmth, each trapped in their own emotional isolation. Other tales in the collection extend this meditation on duty, aspiration, and the quiet disasters of lives driven by pragmatism over feeling. The narrator himself appears early to warn the reader that not everything here is meant to amuse, and indeed these stories linger long after the humor fades. For readers who know only Jerome's comic genius, this collection reveals a writer capable of genuine melancholy and psychological acuity.