Stage-Land (Barnes & Noble Digital Library)

In his dedication page to Stage-Land (published in 1889), Jerome K. Jerome writes: “To that highly respectable but unnecessarily retiring individual of whom we hear so much but see so little, the earnest student of the drama, this (comparatively) truthful little book is lovingly dedicated.”  He then proceeds to humorously, and often with scathing precision, examine those characters who inhabit the world of the stage, namely, such hilarious stereotypes as the Hero, the Comic Lovers, the Irishman, the Lawyer and most famously, and the Villain, who “always wears patent leather boots.”