Everyman's Library P G WODEHOUSE

A beautiful collectable gift box containing three Blandings novels from one of the finest comic writers: PG Wodehouse.
Superb hardback editions all with cloth binding, acid free paper and silk ribbon. A classic gift.

A beautiful collectable gift box containing two comedy classics on golf by one of the finest comic writers: PG Wodehouse.
Superb hardback editions all with cloth binding, acid free paper and silk ribbon.
A classic gift for lovers of comic writing, literary brilliance and of unforgettable characters.
As entertaining, addictive and absorbing as a good round of golf.

A beautiful collectable gift box containing three Jeeves novels from one of the finest comic writers: PG Wodehouse.
Superb hardback editions all with cloth binding, acid free paper and silk ribbon. A classic gift.

In these articles first produced for magazines and substantially rewritten for book publication, Wodehouse reveals his enduring brilliance as a comic writer of non-fiction. But the move out of fiction does not mean a move into unfamiliar territory: any reader of Wodehouse’s stories will be familiar with the topics covered here which preoccupied him all his life, ranging from Shakespeare, Hollywood and musical comedy, to butlers, thrillers, ocean liners and income tax.

A classic musical comedy plot turned into a novel, The Prince and Betty is the story of a man who gives up everything for his girl. Fortunately, she chances to be the step-daughter of a millionaire. John Maude and Betty Silver are in love, but when John turns out to be heir to the principality of Mervo, a small Mediterranean island not a thousand miles from Monte Carlo, he finds himself ensnared in the establishment of a new casino on the island, much to his beloved’s high-minded disgust. She leaves him and takes a job with an American family in London; he abandons his post to follow her. Eventually their misunderstandings are disentangled: the pair are reunited, betrothed and bound for a new life in the United States. And so it is that, in the process of telling their story, published early in his career, Wodehouse constructs the critique of Europe versus America, privilege versus enterprise, decadence versus adventure, which was to underpin many of his later tales.

In Wodehouse’s final novel, unfinished at his death, the author returns to his favourite part of England for one last time. In a classic plot, Vicky Underwood is parted from her fiancé, Jeff Bennison, which means that her uncle, Galahad Threepwood, has to engineer a complicated plot to bring them back together. Many old friends reappear to take their last bow: the Earl of Emsworth, Dame Daphne Winkworth, Beach the butler, the Empress of Blandings (Lord Emsworth’s prize pig), Freddie Threepwood (his son), G. Ovens, innkeeper, and an array of the earl’s formidable sisters. There may be trouble in the air, but at Blandings Castle it is always summer, always quiet and sunlit - and the powers of darkness are always ultimately defeated. Just how that defeat would have been brought about, had Wodehouse completed his story, is shown in the copious notes he made for it. These are included in this volume, together with commentary by Richard Usborne, Tony Ring and Norman Murphy.

Originally published as a serial in Chums under the pseudonym of Basil Windham, The Luck Stone is thoroughly Wodehouse with his trademark sticky situations, quirky characters, sly humour and wit, and of course, his renowned prose. All written in the form of a letter to a friend, this dark and suspenseful plot will never fail to disappoint

First published in 1956, this collection of articles covers Wodehouse's feelings on United States, his adopted homeland all collected into one edition. Features a collection of articles originally from Punch magazine as well as America, I Like You, all with Wodehouse's usual wit and personality

Despite an enormous solo output, P. G Wodehouse often co-operated with other writers, especially in the early stages of his career, exchanging or sharing plots, advising on problems and even writing books and stage-works together. Bring on the Girls is a characteristically mordant account of his work with Guy Bolton in musical comedy, which occupied much of Wodehouse’s energy from his arrival in America and effectively made his reputation. This is a tactful book - there are no shocking revelations - but an extremely amusing one, with vivid portraits of such stars as Gertrude Lawrence and insights into febrile life behind the scenes.

This early novel, written in collaboration with a friend, is a fascinating curiosity which suggests that Wodehouse might have become a very different, experimental sort of writer, had he continued to write in the same vein.

Using multiple narrators, playing with literary stereotypes and identities, it tells the story of an aspiring young writer, James Orlebar Cloyster, prepared to do almost anything, first for success and then for gratification. By making Cloyster a mild, affable young man of the sort so familiar in his later novels, Wodehouse creates a comic disparity between the character’s lofty professions of virtue and his unscrupulous behaviour. As the story progresses, we realise that he is not unusual: all the main characters are unscrupulous in one way or another, ready to cheat and lie in pursuit of their ends, hence the title of the book.

Not George Washington contains many fine scenes, and Cloyster’s narrative displays the calm mastery of story-telling Wodehouse had already made his own. If awkwardly executed, it is cleverly plotted, springing several surprises along the way. Clearly autobiographical in origin, it also invites readers to reflect on the nature of talent, fame, failure and success, villainy and honour - themes which continued to recur in the author’s work for another sixty years.

In this series of letters to William Townend, a fellow-writer and friend since their schooldays at Dulwich College, Wodehouse discusses in some detail his literary outlook, writing methods and constant hunt for new plots. Characteristically modest and lightly humorous in tone, the letters are nevertheless revealing of a dedicated, practical and scrupulous craftsman whose most brilliant inspirations were grounded in decades of unremitting hard work.
The letters are introduced and annotated by the editor, who provided Wodehouse with the idea for one of his most famous characters, Ukridge.

The stories in this collection reflect Wodehouse’s own happy schooldays at Dulwich College but they also do a good deal more. Although among his earliest attempts at fiction they give fascinating glimpses of a time when motor cars were novelties, schoolmasters wore mortar boards and gowns, and America was a rising power in the world.

The best of them display the author’s love of games and knack for neat plotting. In one, a resourceful teenaged heroine helps a truant schoolboy cricketer by marooning his credulous schoolmaster at the top of a church tower until the match is over. Another describes a boy escaping from the scene of his crime by a passing car, only to be caught out by a last-minute revelation. Several Sherlock Holmes parodies read as what they are – high-spirited experiments – but the longer stories delve deeper into character: together, they recreate a vanished world of school shops, fagging, Latin prep and hearty teas.

This volume reprints two of Wodehouse’s earliest books which take the form of story sequences linked by a central character, a technique he used many times thereafter. Delightful in themselves, they are interesting chiefly as windows on a great writer’s early evolution.

In The Man of Means, he looks forward to Bertie Wooster and Ukridge, but also back to his Victorian models, in a fantastic tale of the little man struggling with fate. When a humble clerk comes into a fortune, he embarks on a series of misadventures which suggest that wealth is not necessarily an unmixed blessing. Here we see signs of the satirical writer Wodehouse might have become, and the spirit of Chaplin is not far away.

"Deep down in his heart the genuine Englishman has a rugged distaste for seeing his country invaded by a foreign army. People were asking themselves by what right these aliens had overrun British soil. An ever-growing feeling of annoyance had begun to lay hold of the nation.”

Clarence Chugwater is not a Boy Scout for nothing. It is summer 1909 and everyone is too interested in the Test Match to notice that England has been invaded by the Germans. And the Russians. And the Chinese. Not to mention a ‘boisterous band of the Young Turks’, a mad Mullah, and a brace of North African pirates. The government has recently abolished the army so there is nothing to be done about it anyway, except give a masterly display of polite indifference. But this would be to reckon without patriotic Clarence, ‘Boy of Destiny’, who alone is prepared to stand up to the foe, and who devises a highly unorthodox plan to restore his country to freedom…

The Swoop! Or, How Clarence Saved England reprints the 33 black and white drawings by C. Harrison that accompanied the first edition. It is supplemented by The Military Invasion of America, in which Clarence’s story is humorously transplanted across the Atlantic.

Anthony, fifth Earl of Droitwich, is engaged to Violet, a millionaires daughter which was a result of their families planning rather than natures course. Their plan to maintain the family coffers is undermined by the arrival of his Nanny whom under the influence of too much medicinal Brandy allows certain skeletons out of the family tomb. On top of this Anthony has fallen for manicurist Polly Brown whom the family don't consider to be countess material. Tony departs for London with the resourceful Polly Brown, leaving the ancestral home in the hands of the Socialist barber Syd Price...

Would-be painter, George Finch, with lots of money and no talent, falls for lovely Molly Waddington who falls for him. Unfortunately, Molly’s snobbish stepmother, Mrs Sigsbee H. Waddington, New York society queen, has grander ideas for Molly, not least because George comes from Idaho, which is in every sense beyond the pale. Based on a 1917 musical comedy script by Wodehouse and his friend, Guy Bolton, The Small Bachelor tells the story of George’s struggle to win his girl, with the willing help of Hamilton Beamish, author of self-improvement pamphlets, and the unwitting assistance of a poetic policeman, Molly’s henpecked father, and New York’s premier female pickpocket.