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).
oh this was so iconic. literally three men and a baby. ICONIC. also director of the year bertie wooster??? since i am suffering from severe interview with the vampire brainrot, i had a moment (nay, a vision!!) where i imagined bertie taking armand's place as director for the Théâtre des Vampires. lives would have beeen saved!!!!
Hilarious! Among the best Wodehouse-Jeeves books are the romances. It’s both surprising and charming how involved Bertie is in reconciling lovebirds, and the plot twists resulting from Jeeves’ schemes are first class and always so entertaining. Here, we get some insight into the normally flippant Bertie’s soul : “I admit it. I am a chump.”
In which Bertie kidnaps a child, and then he and Jeeves pavlov the child into demanding that people kiss 😌
Read as part of the Letters Regarding Jeeves series on Substack, which includes all of the Jeeves literature by P. G. Wodehouse that is currently in public domain — the first 25 short stories, as well as the entirety of the novel ‘Right Ho, Jeeves’ — over the course of one year.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
I actually read the version before Wodehouse turned bit into a Jeeves and Wooster story, so it was a different narrator. It was very funny, but I'm pretty sure he ripped off "The Ransom of Red Chief," which was written three years earlier. A lot of the details are changed, but both stories make the same "King Herrod had it right with the infanticide" joke.
Here is another Jeeves and Wooster Short Story. Bertie seems to find himself temporarily babysitting whilst a neighbour overcomes the mumps. Bertie and Jeeves hatch a plan to try and use the child to reunite a couple.
I really enjoyed reading this hilarious Jeeves and Wooster book. It was funny, intelligent, entertaining, and kept my interest from start to finish. Straight out funny, hilarious, and it mirrors life.
Made into television episodes with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry.