Diary of a Nobody

Diary of a Nobody is a comic novel by the English brothers George and Weedon Grossmith, published in book form in June 1892 after appearing intermittently as a serial in the magazine Punch during 1888 and 1889. Written as the diary of Charles Pooter, a lower-middle-class London clerk, over roughly fifteen months, it follows Pooter's daily routine alongside his wife Carrie, his wayward son William Lupin, and a small circle of friends and neighbors, with its comedy built almost entirely from Pooter's unearned sense of his own importance and dignity, repeatedly punctured by small social embarrassments, minor domestic disasters, and his own painfully unfunny jokes. Though it received only a lukewarm reception on first publication, the book never went out of print after gaining a wider following around 1910, and it came to be regarded as a classic of English humorous writing; the critic and novelist Evelyn Waugh called it the funniest book in the world, and the novel is credited with helping establish an entire genre of comic fiction built around the small aspirations and embarrassments of ordinary lower-middle-class life.