The Diary of a Nobody

First issued in book form in 1892 after magazine serialisation, this comic novel is the diary of Charles Pooter, a clerk living at The Laurels, Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, with his wife Carrie. Pooter records small social triumphs and humiliations: parties, a troublesome servant, disputes with tradesmen, the arrival of his son Lupin, and Lupin's unsuitable friends and jobs in the City. Visitors such as Gowing and Cummings drop in; Pooter takes himself and his home improvements entirely seriously. The book is a satire of lower-middle-class respectability, written as a year of domestic entries rather than as a plotted intrigue. Its drama is the slight and the slighted.

Bound in yellow cloth with a design in purple by Lawrence. Lilac endleaves. Dark grey slipcase. Later impressions issued in blue or green slipcase.