JEEVES STORIES

by P.G. Wodehouse

Jeeves Stories is a collection of humorous short stories by P. G. Wodehouse that feature the adventures of his most famous characters, Jeeves and Wooster. Wooster is a wealthy and idle young English gentleman of the interwar era. Jeeves is his extraordinarily competent valet whose name has since become synonymous with perfect service. The stories follow Wooster in his wanderings about London, around England, and across the Atlantic to New York, with Jeeves following in his wake and striving to keep his employer well-groomed and properly presented. Along the way, Jeeves must somehow also manage to extricate Wooster and his friends from the various scrapes and follies they get themselves into.

First published as early as 1915, the stories first appeared on both sides of the Atlantic in publications like The Saturday Evening Post and The Strand Magazine. They were later collected into books or reworked into novels. Though only less than 50 of Wodehouse’s over 300 short stories feature Jeeves and Wooster, they remain his most enduring characters. They’ve been copied, imitated, and featured in countless interpretations and adaptations. A century later, these stories still are as amusing and entertaining as they were when they were first published.

521 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 8, 2021

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

[Tanja Walker · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve read a longer Jeeves novel and enjoyed it, so when I was able to get this collection on Jeeves and Wooster short stories free in the public domain, how could Iturn it down? A light-hearted look at a bygone era of interwar England, where the young idle rich spent their time getting into silly trouble and their manservants bailed them out. A nice palate cleanser of a book.

[Charissa Wilkinson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overview: Nowadays, it seems to be popular to refer to any butler as Jeeves. Where did this idea come from? Well, you have to thank Mr. Wodehouse for it. You see he had a hero and his valet, Bertram Wooster and Jeeves. This is a collection of his stories. How did they line up to their reputation? Let's find out.

Dislikes: Bertie's Aunt Agatha was a bit of a conniving power broker. If you see someone as defective, in either mind or body, would you really ask that person to ensure someone does or does not do something? Doing so seems to have the purpose of setting that person up for failure.

And don't get me started on Richard "Bingo" Little. That man needs to be cut off by his uncle. Then again, I don't like liars. He isn't very trustworthy.

Likes: For the most part, Bertie was a decent guy. The man knew his limits, and unfortunately for him, his biggest troubles often start with a fashion faux-pas.

And Jeeves is the original all around butler who moonlights as his employer's advisor. There is no way that Bertie would have succeeded in his tasks if Jeeves wasn't around.

Conclusion: This was a fun collection to read. Jeeves kind of reminds me of Alfred Pennyworth, to be honest. If you like stories that are comedy of errors, then this book is for you. Enjoy the read.

[Oscar Nierstrasz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haha! All the Jeeves stories are basically the same: Bertie annoys his manservant Jeeves due to some peculiar preference for an unfashionable piece of clothing. Bertie or one of his "coves" gets into trouble about a girl they are in love with (or not). Bertie asks Jeeves for help, but he is not forthcoming due to his annoyance with Bertie, so Bertie comes up with his own outlandish rescue scheme, which goes sideways. In the end Jeeves saves the day with a remarkably elegant manoeuvre, and Bertie, in gratitude concedes to Jeeves and abandons the offending piece of clothing.
And even though the stories are basically the same, they are still great fun!

[Cecil New · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, silly.