Customer Reviews
As valid today as it was upon release - By: G. D. Busby, 03 Jul 2009 
Having been aware of this title for at least twenty years, I have finally got round to reading it; this was catalysed by my daughter & sonin law moving into a property of about the same vintage & possessing many of the same features. It is so easy to envisage the comings & goings experienced by Pooter... A must read, I would argue, yet it took me so long to get round to it!
A pleasant read - By: Fredward Beasley, 24 Feb 2009 
The Diary of a Nobody tellsin diary form the story of a certain Mr Pooter, clerk by profession & a man of no importance or interest. He is somewhat pompous, dull, & stuffy, with pretensions towards gentility but lackingin social skills & self-awareness. He is quite a ridiculous figure, & one who is taken advantage of by many who he is pleased to call his friends, & mocked by his juniors at work. Additionally, all tradesmen are his nemeses. As he sets this downin his diary, however, Mr. Pooter is often oblivious to his own foolishness & to the impression he createsin others, including the reader.
Mr. Pooter's son Lupin is the main source of incidentin his father's life. He is a youth of high spirits & little respect for his elders, including his father. Lupin undertakes a love affair with a young lady called Daisy Mutlar; he is desperatelyin love with this young lady , who seems to Mr. Pooter to be of no remarkable attraction or accomplishments. Concurrent with this torrid affair, Lupin finds & loses several jobs, joins an amateur dramatics club & speculates on the stock exchange with his father's money.
Though over 100 years old, this book is still funny for the modern reader. It was written with the contemporary audiencein mind but the humour has not dated. As another reviewer noted, Mr Pooter is something of a 19th century David Brent.The style is notably uncluttered & unaffected. It is a short book(145 pages approx.in this edition) & extremely readable. From a relatively uneventful start, it gathers momentum with the arrival of Lupin. Pooter's character broadens somewhat to become a decent everyman, though none the less ridiculous for that. This book ends long before the reader has had enough of the bumbling central character, & is a very pleasant, undemanding read.
Hilarious! - By: helpful, 15 Jan 2008 I honestly never knoew that such an old book could be so hilarious! It's writtenin such a brilliant way that you can "see" it all happening - it very vivid. I think they should do a film of this! One of the best books I have read for a long time!
Fantastic! - By: L. Spurling, 08 Sep 2007 This is one of the funniest books I've ever read. I wish another one would have been written! I always read it when I feel a bit downhearted. A great insight into the life of peoplein those times - & how little has changed with regard to a son's attitude to his Dad!!! It was totally my sense of humour.
A delightful story - By: Philippe Horak, 05 Jul 2007 This diary is both a comic masterpiece & an accurate account of lower-middle-class life, attitudes & aspirationsin the late 1880sin London. It is a topical work because it reflects the period at which it was written & it actively makes play with small distinctions of taste & fashionin relation to clothes, social forms, furnishings & décor, shops, slang, transport or popular song.
The limiting factorin "The Diary" is the character of the diarist because Mr Pooter is a Nobody even to his own eyes & this very fact is the reason for the existence of his journal. It is interesting that despite these two aspects - a comedy centred on a nonentity - the book has become a classic & is still widely enjoyed by contemporary readers.
Mr Pooter is a figure of fun, nervous, respectable, sometimes pompous & often the subject of trivial mortifications. The story assumes that Pooter's small gaffesin social know-how or taste can be found everywhere on the social scale so thatin a sense we are all more or less Pooters because we make our own mistakes.
Pooter is perhaps a "nobody"in social terms but he has a full human status. Being fallible he is laughable but so, the authors imply, are the rest of us. If we can identify with this "nobody" the question inevitably comes up whether there can indeed be such a person as a "somebody"!
Weedon Grossmith's illustrations are not only funny to look at, they confirm George Grossmith's hints & help us imagine. For example the illustrations of Pooter & Lupin perfectly show the connection & disconnection between father & son.
The Wordsworth Classics edition features a valuable introduction by Michael Irwin with interesting interpretative views of the novel.
This book is beautifully read by Martin Clifton for Librivox.org & is ideal for readers who like to listen to the story as they read along.
