Something New: by P. G. Wodehouse

by P.G. Wodehouse

Genres: Humor

278 pages, Paperback

Published February 15, 2026

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

[Isha]

Something New was something new for me as well 😜 as this is my first book by Wodehouse — but surely not the last. I won't say the book was extremely funny, but I believe it depends on your imaginative power and on what you find funny.
I surely loved Lord Emsworth declaring the scarab taken from Mr. Peters' possession as his own. The book is interesting in bits and pieces and definitely not complex, but it does show the kind of personalities the world encapsulates.
There are a couple of scenes with Baxter which are funny. But I really loved when Ashe Marson gets a full time job under Mr. Peters — he does show that having self respect is as important as having work. I also appreciate the guts of Miss Joan Valentine for not making the decision to give up in the toughest of situations.
All in all it was a wonderful Audible listen. Wodehouse's writing style effortlessly captures the essence of each character and wraps it all up with a sweet happy ending.

[Sarah Morenon]

A different series from Jeeves, fun, very arch humor.

[Marianne]

This is a fun and light-hearted old mystery that was really enjoyable to listen to as an audiobook