Blandings The Blest And The Blue Blood:A Companion To The Blandings Castle Saga Of P.G. Wodehouse, With A Complete Wodehouse Peerage, Baronetage & Knightage ...

by Geoffrey Jaggard

This book does for the novels about the Threepwood family of Blandings and their friends what Geoffrey Jaggard did for the Wooster-Jeeves stories of P.G.Wodehouse in his first book, Wooster's World, which Richard Usborne described in The Times as "butter from a lordly dish". It is nothing less than a complete concordance to the Blandings saga, recently so engagingly translated for B.B.C. television as "Blandings Castle" with Ralph Richardson and Stanley Holloway as the splendidly dotty pair, Lord Emsworth and his butler Beach. It catalogues all the characters, whether blue-blooded or red, lists all the places which they inhabit or visit (see Even Statelier, a survey of English country homes), traces the complex genealogy of the House of Blandings, whose head is the immortal Clarence, 9th Earl of Emsworth, and even has a place for the animals which appear--pride of place is not unnaturally given to Emsworth's champion sow, the Empress of Blandings.

227 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1968

Reviews

[Stephen]

I give out stars more freely for humor than for other genres; so, five stars to this book does not mean it's on an intellectual or spiritual par with five-star books that, to borrow Woody Allen's term, are big on heaviosity. But you knew that.

As there are reader's companions to Joyce and to Pynchon, for example, this book is a reader's companion to the Blandings Castle novels and stories. All true blue Wodehouse lovers should have it on the bedside table. The cover reads "'Deserves to sell in cartloads': P.G. Wodehouse" and "'A real corker': B. Wooster"

Let's say you can't remember who was in on the abduction and concealment of Lord Wivenhoe's pig. The answer is right here in the alphabetical index. Or, open the slim volume at random for ten laughs per page.

The same author wrote Wooster's World which I must have read but cannot find on my physical shelf for proof of same. Equally invaluable.