Read the text and match the paragraphs with their correct headings (A-H). There is one extra heading. A. Further success B. Influence on the next work C. Last years

Read the text and match the paragraphs with their correct headings (A-H). There is one extra heading.

A. Further success

B. Influence on the next work

C. Last years

D. Unbelievable success

E. Acting career

F. Early life

G. Broken dreams

H. Later career

(1) ______ Jerome Klapka Jerome was an English writer and humorist, famous for the comic travelogue Three Men in a Boat. Jerome was born in Walsall, England. He was the fourth child of an ironmonger and lay preacher. He had two sisters, Paulina and Blandina, and one brother, Milton, who died at an early age. Jerome was registered as Jerome Clapp Jerome, like his father's name, and the Klapka appears to be a later variatiob. The family fell into poverty owing to bad investments in the local mining industry, an experience that Jerome described vividly in his autobiography My Life and Times.

(2) ______ The young Jerome attended St Marylebone Grammar School. He wished to go into politics or be a man of letters, but the death of his father when Jerome was 13 and of his mother when he was 15 forced him to quit his studies and find work to support himself. He was employed at the London and North Western Railway, initially collecting coal that fell along the railway, and he remained there for four years.

(3) ______ Jerome was inspired by his older sister’s love for the theatre, and he decided to try his hand at acting in 1877, under the stage name Harold Crichton. He joined a troupe that produced plays often drawing on the actors' own resources to purchase costumes and props. After three years on the road with no evident success, the 21-year-old Jerome decided that he had enough of stage life and sought other occupations. Finally, in 1885, he had some success with a collection of humorous essays. They were published in the newly founded magazine, Home Chimes.

(4) ______ On 21 June 1888, Jerome married Georgina Elizabeth Henrietta Stanley Marris. The honeymoon took place on the Thames "in a little boat”, a fact that was to have a significant influence on his next and most important work, Three Men in a Boat. Jerome sat down to write Three Men in a Boat as soon as the couple returned from their honeymoon. In the novel, his wife was replaced by his longtime friends George and Harris.

(5) ______ Jerome managed to create hilarious situations which were connected to the history of the Thames region. The book, published in 1889, became an instant success and has never been out of print. Its popularity was such that the number of registered Thames boats went up fifty percent in the year following its publication, and it contributed significantly to the Thames becoming a tourist attraction. In its first twenty years alone, the book sold over a million copies worldwide.

(6) ______ With the financial security that the sales of the book provided, Jerome was able to dedicate all of his time to writing. He wrote a number of plays, essays, and novels, but was never able to recapture the success of Three Men in a Boat. In 1892, he became the editor of The Idler. In 1893, he founded To-Day, but had to withdraw from both publications because of financial difficulties. In 1898, a short stay in Germany inspired Jerome to write Three Men on the Bummel, the sequel to Three Men in a Boat. The book, however, was not very successful.

(7) ______ In 1926, Jerome published his autobiography, My Life and Times. He spent more time at his farmhouse near Wallingford. In June 1927 Jerome suffered a paralytic stroke. He lay in Northampton General Hospital for two weeks before dying on 14 June. His gravestone reads "For we are labourers together with God". A small museum dedicated to this talented writer and his works was opened in 1984 at his birth home in Walsall, but it closed in 2008, and the contents were returned to Walsall Museum.

(From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)