Vintage Wodehouse

by P.G. Wodehouse

Softcover with considerable front wrap creasing, toned text. Good reading copy.

Genres: Humor, Fiction, Short Stories

Paperback

Published January 1, 1979

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

[Susanne Beyer · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good introduction. Loved the language and the humour.

[Vikas Datta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extremely delightful... takes you into a magical world...

[Eleanor Yates · Rating 4 out of 5]

As usual, Wodehouse never fails to make me laugh, and I enjoyed this collection immensely. It was great to read a real variety of his works, and read some less well-known pieces.

I did find it a bit hard going having a collection of short stories, rather than one long tale. I was constantly forgetting who people were, or getting attached to characters, only to find them gone in a few pages time and onto the next story. It took me such a long time to finish this!

I was disappointed that Usborne did not order his choices for the collection chronologically, but maybe that wouldn’t have worked so well.

Overall, a very pleasant and funny read! 4 stars

[Bold Gambit]

Are these stories written by P G Wodehouse, or are they written by Richard Usborne based on characters created by P G Wodehouse?

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘No novelist anywhere any good except me. P.G. Wodehouse and Tolstoi not bad.’

[carmen a secas · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delightful and hilarious. Real gems.

[Mark · Rating 4 out of 5]

The fourth dimension
Still thirsty for old stories
told at the local

[Graeme Wilkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

What's not to love about Wodehouse.. Yes, now his stories could be construed as not "PC" but what of it.. The fun of reading of "upper class" twits in adventures of love and loss, along with the basic "common" sense of those "toilers" give rise to, the now fashionable LOL..
This collection is a fine smattering of favourites and provides insight into a unique man..
His "appeciation" of incarceration in 1941 German occupied Paris is great testimony to the wholesome attitude to life so evident in his creations
Highly recommended for relief from the pervading cynicism of pure light-hearted fun...

[Gouthami · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wodehouse is priceless and always manages to make my laugh out loud! I am reading this book after many years and enjoyed it thoroughly! It has snippets from his other books - so while reading I had the joy of remembering the book from which it was taken and laughing again! A great book to dip into randomly!

[Louise Brown · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great intro, left wanting to read more than shorts and excerpts.