Fiction · 1908
The Philosopher’s Joke
Six people are persuaded that something impossible happened to them, and cannot talk each other out of it because there are six of them. Armitage tells the story in a club smoking-room, hoping that a sufficiently sceptical listener will help him dismiss it: how one midsummer evening the six of them — three couples on the point of arranging their lives — met an old gentleman who may have been a philosopher and may have been something else, and were given their youth back to live again, knowing what came of it the first time. The question the story leaves is whether, given the knowledge, they chose any differently.
Jerome K. Jerome published the story in 1908. It is one of his serious pieces, and it belongs with the strain in his work — Three Men in a Boat notwithstanding — that is interested in second chances and in how little use people make of them.
This Bibliomancer edition presents the complete text.
New editions
Never lose your place.
This book is free to read in full, and stays that way. Leave an address: one click confirms it and opens a free account, so your progress and bookmarks sync across every device. You'll also hear when the next restored edition enters the archive. Terminate at any time.
Subjects
About this edition
The text is free of copyright. This edition was prepared from an authoritative digitisation, processed by Bibliomancer under its own review protocol; every automated correction is recorded in its transformation log. Rights assessed for CA, EU, GB, US.
Source mind
About the author
1859–1927 · Victorian
Jerome K. Jerome (1859–1927) was born in Walsall, left school at fourteen, and worked as a railway clerk, actor, teacher and journalist before Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886) and Three Men in a Boat (1889) made him famous. He edited the magazines The Idler and To-Day, wrote plays (The Passing of the Third Floor Back, 1908) and a sequel, Three Men on the Bummel (1900).
Adjacent records
