Diary O A Nobody Notes
...own research & thinking - all I have done is sketch out some ideas and put together a chapter-by-chapter synopsis.
Written in 1888 and originally published in episodic form in Punch Magazine, this is a comic novel of Victorian manners, described by J B Priestley as 'true humour...with its mixture of absurdity, irony and affection..'
Publishing fiction in episodes was a common feature of Victorian literature. Charles Dickens and Arthur Conan Doyle both published their work in magazines, as did many other writers of the time. The 'Diary of a Nobody' ran from 1888 -89 in the popular satirical magazine 'Punch' and became a huge success. The authors were brothers, George and Weedon Grossmith. George was probably the main writer and his brother Weedon drew the illustrations. The content, however, is very probably a 'joint effort', for it satirises many Victorian attitudes and values and since both men had careers in the performing arts, it is entirely probable that they collaborated on the creation of the hapless Charles Pooter and his family.
The form of the novel is interesting, and very topical for a contemporary Victorian audience, used to reading accounts of 'famous lives' written in the form of lengthy journals and often published by so-called 'vanity presses' (the authors would pay the printers to publish their work). Charles Pooter, the 'Nobody' of the title, is a middle aged clerk who lives in North London in the late 1880's. He decides to keep a diary of his life and assures the reader at the outset that he 'fails to see - because I do not happen to be a Somebody - why my diary should not be interesting.' The Grossmith brothers are obviously satirising an affectation which they (and probably many others) found quite pompous and arrogant.
Pooter is definitely not a 'Somebody' - he is a very ordinary man with a very tedious and ordinary existence in a...
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