Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow, published in 1886 in London, is a collection of humorous essays by Jerome K. Jerome. It was the authorÕs second published book and it helped establish him as a leading English humorist. While widely considered one of JeromeÕs better works, and in spite of using the same style as Three Men in a Boat, it was never as popular as the latter. A second “Idle Thoughts” book, The Second Thoughts of An Idle Fellow, was published in 1898. The essays had previously appeared in Home Chimes, the same magazine that later serialised Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat.