The adventures of three men, and a fox terrier, making preparations for and on a boating trip up the Thames, enlivened with suitable anecdotes. Extremely funny.
Not just for the incidents, but for Jerome's marvelous writing, which can cheerfully work up, as he does in the first chapter, the glorious wonders and marvels of camping out (as viewed from your own rooms), and the horrors and miseries of camping out in the rain.
So, in this splendiferous style, we get the time Harris got lost in Hampton Maze, the attack of the swans, the desperate hunt for a place, any place, where they could stay the night, reflection on how the bric-a-brac of the Victorian era would be treasures in the future, the charms of locks, and the problems of fow-lines, among many other marvels.