1892 George and Weedon Grossmith’s Diary of a Nobody was first published serially in Punch in 1891, and following its huge success in those pages, as a book the following year. The ‘nobody’ of the title is Charles Pooter, who works in a City office as a clerk under Mr Perkupp. He lives in a rented villa, The Laurels, Brickfield Terrace, Holloway, with his wife Carrie. And it is on taking possession of his Englishman’s Castle that he resolves to keep a diary. The first entry is businesslike:
April 3
Tradesmen called for custom, and I promised Farmerson, the ironmonger, to give him a turn if I wanted any nails or tools. By-the-by, that reminds me there is no key to our bedroom door, and the bells must be seen to. The parlour bell is broken, and the front door rings up in the servant’s bedroom, which is ridiculous. Dear friend Gowing dropped in, but wouldn’t stay, saying there was an infernal smell of paint.
The diary goes on to recount Mr Pooter’s Lilliputian daily adventures at work and his social life (in which the biggest event is an invitation to the Mansion House ball). Pooter’s son, Lupin, is a source of distress. He gets engaged to a highly unsuitable girl. He joins his father to work for Perkupp, and is discharged. All ends well, however, with Pooter able to buy his own house at last, a consummation recorded as ‘the happiest day of my life’. The Grossmiths’ charming work was immensely popular and inspired a whole genre of pseudo-diaristic successors, and a new word for the English dictionary-makers, ‘Pooterism’. It does not translate well.