Diary Of A Pilgrimage

"Diary of a Pilgrimage" is a novel by Jerome K. Jerome, published in 1891. The novel is based on real events and reflects a trip undertaken by Jerome and his friend "B" to see the Oberammergau Passion Play in Germany. The novel can also be described as a fictional Victorian-era travelogue, thanks to the abundance of places protagonists visit and picturesque descriptions of exciting places.

This early work by Jerome K. Jerome was originally published in 1891 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Diary of a Pilgrimage' is a novel set during a journey to Oberammergau, in Bavaria, to see the Passion play that is performed there every ten years. Jerome Klapka Jerome was born in Walsall, England in 1859. Both his parents died while he was in his early teens, and he was forced to quit school to support himself. In 1889, Jerome published his most successful and best-remembered work, 'Three Men in a Boat'. Featuring himself and two of his friends encountering humorous situations while floating down the Thames in a small boat, the book was an instant success, and has never been out of print. In fact, its popularity was such that the number of registered Thames boats went up fifty percent in the year following its publication.

Author, actor, playwright and journalist Jerome K. Jerome first rose to literary acclaim as a writer of hilarious travelogues. Diary of a Pilgrimage continues in this vein, recounting a journey by train to take in a performance of a passion play in Germany during which Jerome and his traveling companions must contend with a number of logistical difficulties, cultural miscues, and other snafus.

This new version of the late fourth-century diary of journeys in and around the Holy Land known as the Itinerarium Egeriae provides a more literal translation of the Latin text than earlier English renderings, with the aim of revealing more of the female traveler’s personality. The substantial introduction to the book covers both early pilgrimage as a whole, especially travel by women, and the many liturgical rites of Jerusalem that Egeria describes. Both this and the verse-by-verse commentary alongside the translated text draw on the most recent scholarship, making this essential reading for pilgrims, students, and scholars seeking insight into life and piety during one of Christianity’s most formative periods.

Written in the first part of the fifth century, this work is a charming record of the observations of a Christian woman on a lengthy pilgrimage to the Holy Lands. Her firsthand account is a work of major significance for the fields of archaeology, church history, philology, and comparative liturgy. +

Jerome Klapka Jerome (1859 –1927) was an English writer and humourist. The pilgrimage of the title is a journey to see the famous Passion Play at Oberammergau, which has been performed every ten years since 1634, the middle of the Thirty Years War. «Diary» is a typically witty account of this journey, part travelogue and part social commentary. Journalist, playwright and author, a wealth of his writing has remained just beyond the public gaze. «Diary of a Pilgrimage» is one such work.