Born in Walsall, Staffordshire, England. He worked a clerk, schoolmaster, reporter, actor, journalist, and editor of a weekly. In 1889 he wrote the well-known novel Three Men in a Boat, in 1900 - Three Men on the Bummel and in 1902 - Paul Kelver.
A picture would have come home from the frame-maker’s, and be standing in the dining-room, waiting to be put up; and Aunt Podger would ask what was to be done with it, and Uncle Podger would say: “Oh, you leave that to me. Don’t you, any of you, worry yourselves about that. I’ll do all that.”
