P.G. Wodehouse: A Portrait of a Master

by David A. Jasen

For more than a century, readers around the world have been delighted by the novels, short stories, plays, lyrics, and essays of Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, best known as the creator of the dim-witted English gentleman Bertie Wooster and his indispensable valet, Jeeves. David A. Jasen has written this definitive and authorized biography of one of the greatest literary humorists of all time.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction

298 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1974

About the author

David A. Jasen is considered to be the world's foremost authority on ragtime music. He has studied, recorded, and performer ragtime music for over five decades; his publications include complete scores for many major ragtime composers, and several books on the history of the music. Additionally, he has authored for Routledge a number of other well-received and strong selling reference works, including Tin Pan Alley: An Encyclopedia and A Century of American Popular Song.

Reviews

[David Kindred · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was a bit of a slog to get through. For the researcher, it has plenty of information about the what's when's and where's of Wodehouse's work, but not enough information about Plum, himself, or any of the desired behind-the-scenes of the development of his characters. It became more interesting from WW II through to the end of his life, but I cannot heartily recommend this book to anyone but the Wodehouse scholar. It simply doesn't paint enough of a picture of the man, himself, to make it very interesting to the average Wodehouse fan.

[Mark Nenadov · Rating 3 out of 5]

I love Wodehouse and I found some great tidbits in here, but it seems to lean too heavily on lengthy letter excerpts and seems rather listish and perfunctory at times.

[Glen Engel-Cox · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although I’ve fallen off a bit on my drive to read all the P. G. Wodehouse ouvre in order, I can feel my juices beginning to bubble up about it again after reading this delightful biography of the master. I don’t know what to think of Jasen as a biographer–I tend to believe that he’s a poor one from the showing on this book, as he tends to simply list events in Plum’s life, interspersed with excerpted letters by and to Plum. And Jasen makes no bones that his book is an unbiased study of Wodehouse, from the subtitle to the treatment. On the other hand, I don’t know how you could treat Wodehouse in any other way, for he truly had lost any malicious bone in his body at approximately the age of 25, as if mean-spiritedness was a baby-tooth that one lost and promptly forgot about.

I bought this book years ago for its secondary bibliography, listing all the stories and books. With something roughly like 90 books to his credit, sometimes with similar titles between novels, different titles for American or British publication, and all eminently re-readable, it’s quite a chore to keep them straight in one’s mind. With an accurate list at hand, the only problem is finding the damn things.

I believe Frances Donaldson has written a more traditional biography (did I read it back when I first discovered Wodehouse in the stacks at the University of Texas?), which I should acquire and judge against Jasen.