My Funniest Story

by P.G. Wodehouse, Morley Roberts, Michael Hogan

PRE-ISBN.

An anthology of stories chosen by their own


"Honeysuckle Cottage" (P G Wodehouse)
"The Truth About Pyecraft" (H G Wells)
"Romance, Rattlesnakes, and Middlemen" (H A Vachell)
"When I First Met Dr Hickey" (E OE Somerville & M Ross)
"A Comedy of Capricorn" (M Roberts)
"Fish Are Such Liars" (R Pertwee)
"A Skinful of Trouble" (A Morrison)
"The Epic of the Heavenly Cook" (L Merrick)
"An Odd Freak" (W W Jacobs)
"The Girl with the Grave Noise" (A S M Hutchinson)
"Forbidden Fruit" (I Hay)
"Bats in the Belfry" (H Graham)
"The Brazen Serpent" (R A Freeman)
"Mustard Pot - Matchmaker" (G Frankau)
"The Three Infernal Jokes" (Dunsany)
"The Saucepan" ( L Doyle)
"The Guardian Angel" (W A Darlington)
"Getting Bungo-Land" (M Constanduros & M Hogan)
"A Lunatic at large" (Birmingham)
"The Man Who Fell In Love with the Co-Operative Stores" (S Benson)
"The Laird's Lucky Number" (J J Bell)
"The Leg Puller" ('Bartimeus')
"Look this Way, Baby" (F E Baily)
"Ferdie" (F Anstey)

498 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1932

About the author

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.

An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by more recent writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea", a description that Wodehouse used as the title of a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend.

Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a talented playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of fifteen plays and of 250 lyrics for some thirty musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934) and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song Bill in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote the lyrics for the Gershwin/Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).

Reviews

[^ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Of its period, but none the less delightful for that. Excellent for dipping into.

I'd love to a) know WHO at Faber & Faber edited this high quality collection, and b) I'd really like to have this anthology in e-book format.

[Russio · Rating 1 out of 5]

1. Wodehouse - a crime writer finds himself in the plot of a romance novel. Hilarious!
2. Wells - a fat man seeks a shortcut to weight loss. Dated.
3. Vachell - a broker with snakes in a basket…to begin with.
4. Somerville & Ross - urg.
5. Roberts - Goat in room.
6. Pertwee - Clever fish. Very dated.
7. Morrison - Tiger. Dated.
8. Merrick - poet sauce.
9. Jacobs - The wild man. Racist.
10. Hutchinson - Doughnut. Moderately sexist.
11. Hay - prohibition. One shocking reference to the KKK that needs a footnote at the very least.
12. Graham - bats. Nice story.
13. Freeman - medallion. Anti-Semitic.
14. Frankau - a fearful chase. Racist.
15. Dunsany (Lord) - a joke that is so good Monty Python snaffled it. Bit racist and classist.
16. Doyle - quite good story about a stuck head.
17. Darlington - cricket.
18. Constanduras & Hogan - New radio. Bit racist; classist. Yet contains this gem: ‘Very voluptuous isn’t it? The Spanish are famous everywhere for their volupt.’
19. Birmingham - certifiable madmen.
20. Benson - stupid story. Antisemitic.
21. Bell - housekeeper. Sexist.
22. Bartimeus - naval jape.
23. Baily - two youngsters with uncle/aunt. Good fun. Tiny bit dated.
24. Anstey - Mandrake. Risible and racist.