The diary is that of someone who acknowledges that he is not a "somebody" - Charles Pooter, a clerk in the city of London, chronicles with often hilarious detail the everyday life of the lower middle classes during the great Victorian Age.

With an Introduction and Notes by Michael Irwin, Professor of English Literature, University of Kent at Canterbury.

The Diary of a Nobody is so unassuming a work that even its author, George Grossmith, seemed unaware that he had produced a masterpiece. For more than a century this wonderfully comic portrayal of suburban life and values has remained in print, a source of delight to generations of readers, and a major literary influence, much imitated but never equalled.

If you don’t recognise yourself at some point in The Diary you are probably less than human. If you can read it without laughing aloud you have no sense of humour.