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Sir Agravaine
Hardcover with unclipped dust jacket, in good condition. Jacket is scuffed, marked and sunned. Edges are creased and nicked. Boards are lightly scored. Corners and spine ends are bumped and rubbed. Binding is sound, pages are clear and colours vivid. LW
- GenresHumor
48 pages, Hardcover
First published December 17, 2012
16 people want to read
About the author
P.G. Wodehouse
1,710 books6,985 followersSir 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).
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).
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 8, 2008
An amusing parody of a knight errant of King Arthur's court at Camelot who rescues a damsel in distress.
Unusual for a P.G.Wodehouse story, the illustrations are even funnier than the story, as they depict an incredibly homely and awkward Sir Agravaine who is delighted to rescue his maiden fair whom he considers to be a vision of loveliness, but the artist reveals is even more homely than he is.
The illustration of the "strabismic plug-ugly" holding the damsel prisoner, is priceless.
Unusual for a P.G.Wodehouse story, the illustrations are even funnier than the story, as they depict an incredibly homely and awkward Sir Agravaine who is delighted to rescue his maiden fair whom he considers to be a vision of loveliness, but the artist reveals is even more homely than he is.
The illustration of the "strabismic plug-ugly" holding the damsel prisoner, is priceless.
June 17, 2011
I love this story, but the pictures used to terrify me when I was little. Such UGLY "bad guys"!
April 27, 2018
I have always had a weak spot for this particular story when I first discovered it in one of those atrocious Arthurian anthologies. I think it was called "The Camelot Chronicles" or something of the sort, and this gem of a story stood out from the purple prosed fan fiction company of that volume. the other stories, though as colorful as bowl of Lucky charms cereal, were far too serious for their own good. I knew I wanted to include this story without adding that anthology to my Arthurian shelf. Thus, I was glad to find this particular illustrated volume from Blandford Press with the "nervous rabbit" caricature of Sir Agravaine and the plump homeliness of our heroine, Yvonne.
Wodehouse begins his story by leveling out a Twainesque critique of medieval storytelling in which "their idea of telling a story was to take a long breath and start droning away without any stops or dialogue till the thing was over." Wodehouse also levels some further digs at Tennyson and Malory in describing his main characters as the antithesis to the models of physical strength and beauty in both Agravaine and Yvonne, the unremarkable damsel in distress (the McPhail illustrations of her are priceless).
The story involves the typical plea for succor and a little predictable twist at the end. The tale is short and humorous; the illustrations delightfully match the author's irreverence. I recommend this heartfelt and heckled story to any Arthurian enthusiast who needs a little break from the heights of the stately Tennyson or epic Malory.
Wodehouse begins his story by leveling out a Twainesque critique of medieval storytelling in which "their idea of telling a story was to take a long breath and start droning away without any stops or dialogue till the thing was over." Wodehouse also levels some further digs at Tennyson and Malory in describing his main characters as the antithesis to the models of physical strength and beauty in both Agravaine and Yvonne, the unremarkable damsel in distress (the McPhail illustrations of her are priceless).
The story involves the typical plea for succor and a little predictable twist at the end. The tale is short and humorous; the illustrations delightfully match the author's irreverence. I recommend this heartfelt and heckled story to any Arthurian enthusiast who needs a little break from the heights of the stately Tennyson or epic Malory.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews