Charles Pooter

Pooter is a middle-aged and middle-class clerk in the City of London, with ideas above his station.

[2] Pooter's intimate friends Cummings and Gowing always let themselves in at the side entrance, thus saving the housemaid the trouble of going to the door.

[3] The character has spawned the word Pooterism (Pooterish, Pooteresque), which means taking oneself far too seriously: believing that one's importance or influence is far greater than it really is.

[4][5][6] A 1984 edition of The Diary of a Nobody published by Elm Tree Books included new illustrations by artists Paul Hogarth and Philip Hood, the latter providing a colour caricature of Pooter in the style of the Victorian publication Vanity Fair at the suggestion of the publisher.

Based on the illustrations by Weedon Grossmith, Hood's was the first attempt by an artist to create a detailed and realistic portrait of Charles Pooter.