P.G. Wodehouse Books

Quate. I especially like the Hollywood stories - Plum's Revenge.

In the preface PG Wodehouse explains that he is writing at his funniest, and cannot be held responsible for what occurs. And though I've read through a fair amount of the Wodehouse library, this book is without a doubt the most humorous novel yet penned by the prolific author.

This book revolves around a Mr. Mulliner who resides often on a barstool at the local tavern, and likes to tell tales about all his relatives. The tales usually involve a chap trying to win over a reluctant girl in some fashion, but every story is so original and has a wonderful twist in the end where things work out for the best.

I chose to read this book at work, and despite my best efforts couldn't stop myself from laughing aloud while reading this book during my lunch hour. It's absolutely hilarious, it is indeed Wodehouse writing at his funniest.

There are so many levels on which this book is funny. Wodehouse's use of the language is wonderful, the characters are amusing yet sympathetic, and the plots are hysterically funny. Not to be missed!!

Exceptionally witty. Very relaxing -- read it on the night prior of my Ph.D. Candidacy exam at Princeton. If I had to select only one book, this certainly would be it.

I can't believe I waited this long to read Jeeves and Wooster. I've been enjoying the old BBC productions (Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry) from Netflix. Now that I read the original, I see that they absolutely nailed the tone. I can't wait to get to the part of my day when I have leisure to read another section.

Fine introduction and timeline, nice place-holding ribbon in this hardback edition.

I don't own this anthology, just became aware of it half an hour ago, but a little Googling reveals that it comes in at about 500 pages. Introduction by John Mortimer. It contains two complete novels, one Jeeves and one Blandings Castle: The code of the Woosters (1938) and Uncle Fred in the springtime (1939); along with 14 stories: Jeeves takes charge, Jeeves and the impending doom, The love that purifies, Jeeves and the Yule,tide spirit, The great sermon handicap, Uncle Fred flits by, The crime wave at Blandings, The amazing hat mystery, Honeysuckle cottage, Ukridge rounds a nasty corner, A bit of luck for Mabel, The editor regrets, The heart of a goof, The nodder; plus extracts from his memoir: From over seventy.

It all looks pretty fine to me. The short story selection, in as much as I'm able to judge, looks excellent. Golf stories, yahoo! But really it'd be worth it just for the Code of the Woosters and Uncle Fred which are basically priceless (and both customer reviewed elsewhere at Amazon). Also Everyman hardbacks are really nice books in my experience, well printed on decent paper and bound properly, made to last.

But, you know, Wodehouse is Wodehouse. He's just stone brilliant, God's gift to readers. The only thing that could really go wrong with having this would be the book catching fire.

How do you select a Best of Wodehouse collection. Everyman's Library does an excellent job of pulling some of the best from the many Wooster & Jeeves books as well as other writings. Totally enjoyable read...great book to take to bed with you. Light but interesting stories with lots of twists and turns...Great comic sense. Also this addition is beautifully bound with built in page ribbon (I always like that!)

Fish Preferred is one of the several delightful books in the Blandings Castle series by P.G. Wodehouse. Fish Preferred is better than many other P.G. Wodehouse books in that the plot and character development are more thorough than most which keeps the fun going longer.

Clarence, the ninth Earl of Emsworth, is at home in his castle in Shropshire where he dotes on his famous prize-winning pig, the Empress of Blandings. Having dispatched his earlier secretary, Baxter, Clarence is at peace contemplating how his pig will win again when he learns from his brother Galahad (Gally) that the neighbor's pig man is offering 3:1 odds against the Empress. Clarence and Gally presume that their neighbor, Sir Gregory Parsloe is planning to knobble the Empress. Their worst fears are borne out when the Empress disappears!

At the same time, Parsloe lives in fear that Gally will publish old stories about his wild younger days in Gally's new book. Clarence's and Gally's sister Connie wants to stop publication as well. Soon the castle is overrun with manuscript thieves!

At the same time, love is in the air. Clarence's new secretary, Hugo Carmody, is secretly and unsuitably in love with Millicent Threepwood, niece to Clarence, Connie and Gally, and Millicent is in love with him. But they need to get some financial help to pull off the merger.

Ronald Fish, a wealthy young man whose money is tied with Clarence, is also in love with an unsuitable person . . . one Sue Brown who is a chorus girl. Ronnie has proven himself to be a poor judge of investments in the past, and Clarence is skeptical of allowing any more money. It doesn't help when Clarence finds that Ronnie doesn't truly share his love of pigs!

Will love win out? Of course! It's a P.G. Wodehouse book. But before love wins, humor will take the day in many silly scenes worthy of Shakespeare's best in the forest of Arden.

"Fish Preferred" was the first book I've read by Wodehouse. It most certainly won't be the last. The title alone led me to pick it up off the shelf. I could hardly resist something so promising, and the story kept its end of the deal by being even more spectacular than I could have imagined. I very rarely laugh out loud while reading. It is even more rare for me to read out the best bits to my friends at every opportunity. And it is an extreme anomaly for them to actually laugh at my renditions. Yet somehow all three of these things occured as I read this book. Each character is vibrant and alive, from Ronnie Fish, the red-faced slayer of waiters, to the efficient Baxter with his steel-rimmed spectacles and inclination for leaping out of windows, to Lord Emsworth and his beloved Empress. There is an amazing humor to this story that still remains strong even when filtered through my pathetic imitation of a British accent.

This book probably is one of the funniest book I have ever read. The title refers to a character named Ronnie Fish who stole a pig. This pig was the apple of the eye of lord Emsworth. The Empress (the pig) had won medals in a competition and Ronnie Fish wanted to steal it. Wodehouse creates a satire on a love problem. This goes in to relate to the missing pig. In the end, the hero Galahad puts everything back to normal again. It is the common Wodehouse theme, but altered greatly. Any one can enjoy this book. : )

Typical Wodehouse humor. I've always enjoyed his light humor and concise writing style, and this book is no exception. A throughly enjoyable read!

Plum has brought the passion for golf alive with unusual style and aplomb in this one. All the stories viewed through the eyes of the "Oldest Member" take on vivid color, and their solutions lie, no doubt, on the greens! Right from a novice taking up golf, to a professional golfer they all have their solutions to the toughest problems in life only on the golf course. Viva le golf! And Viva Wodehousian humor!

If you wanted to read all of Wodehouse's golf stories at once, you'd want the Golf Omnibus. If you'd rather not lug around a phone book-sized volume, however, you may prefer this moveable feast of a dozen prime Plum stories (a baker's dozen if you count the preface by D.R. Benson), the best of Wodehouse on the links. Unlike the pocket paperbacks of some Wodehouse editions, with print so small you nearly need a magnifying lens, this oversized "quality" paperback nearly qualifies as a "large print edition." So it's really the best of both worlds, requiring neither a microscope nor a forklift for enjoyment.

Reading Plum on golf, however, is like playing a familiar course; the same stories are scattered throughout various editions. All of these stories have appeared elsewhere. Fore! opens with a very funny story that is quite unlike most of his golf tales, "The Coming of Gowf," which originally appeared in Golf Without Tears (1924), as did four other stories. That's the American title of a book that appeared in Britain as The Clicking of Cuthbert (1922). Five stories appeared in the American collection, Divots (1927), published in England as The Heart of a Goof (1926). The final tales are from Nothing Serious (1950/1951), published in both British and American editions. For golfers with a literary bent, here's the best imaginable introduction to P.G. Wodehouse, and old Wodehouse fans will be happy to walk around the course again.

What fun! Humorist Wodehouse was near, perhaps at his best when he wrote ARCHIE. The humor is gentle and old fashioned by modern lights, but loses nothing in the telling, as Wodehouse spins his fiction and observes the social landscape of this, his adopted country.

In addition to an avid enjoyment of the Drones, Jeeves, golf, and Mulliner tales, I find I am developing a marked taste for Wodehouse's light novels. Everything he touches, it seems, turns to laughter. Other places the commedia del arte takes place in motion picture studios, on cruise ships, at resorts on the French Riviera, but here the venue is the Hotel Cosmopolis, drawn, no doubt, from his observations of New York nightlife. And here's Archie, a good-hearted, bumbling Brit out to seek his fortune in the colonies. And of course he met a girl while vacationing. And of course she's a millionaire's daughter. And of course said millionaire is proprietor of said hotel. Does it sound like a formula? Right ho! a formula for fun. Richard Usborne says this book is a lot of stiched together stories. But so what? Ukridge is a lot of not stiched together stories. This book introduces one of Wodehouse's best heroines, Lucille, as the power behind the throne of the Lucy/Archie axis, together pitted against her anti-Archie father. How can you not order it?

Poor Archie! Trying to win his stern old father-in-law over, only to land himself in deeper trouble! Getting locked out of his artist friend's apartment in a scarlet bathrobe, and many more such money-making schemes gone haywire, including those to get his f-in-law's approval. The portrait gone awry, and the shoes left outside the door.... Oh no! I'm not going to tell you anymore, you just must read this, and you'll find yourself laughing uncontrollably wondering how you ever thought the world was a drab place! With Wodehouse, there is always laughter in the world!

Much Obliged, Jeeves was the second Wodehouse book I read. While I enjoyed the almost short story styling of The Inimitable Jeeves, I thoroughly enjoyed the cohesiveness of Much Obliged. Much Obliged starts with Bertie being invited to visit his Aunt Dahlia in Market Snodsbury. An old pal of Bertie's by the name of Harold "Ginger" Winship is a candidate for Parliament in the Snodsbury election. By this time, even a relatively new fan of Wodehouse, such as I am, can tell that trouble is brewing on the horizon. Enter Jeeves and the Junior Ganymede club book. The Junior Ganymede is a club of butlers; each member is obliged to write about his employer in the club book. This is done so that anyone seeking employment with a gentleman may look him up in the club book and, thus, know what they're in for. Of course, Bertie has an unusually large section in the club book. However, much to Bertie's surprise, Ginger also has quite a few damning pages in the club book as well. When the club book is stolen by a unethical, as well as repulsive, character by the name of Bingley, Ginger's chance of winning the Snodsbury election becomes uncertain and the hilarity begins. Again, another great book that leaves the reader shouting, "Good show!"

P.G. Wodehouse was ninety years old when he published this, the second-to-last of the Bertie and Jeeves novels. Despite Wodehouse's advanced age, he managed to fill this book, also published as Jeeves and the Tie That Binds, with the sparkle and fun that characterizes all the Bertie and Jeeves novels.

There is, of course, the usual cast. In addition to Bertie and Jeeves, Aunt Dahlia is present, as is her husband, Thomas Portarlington Travers. In addition, Roderick Spode (who is now Lord Sidcup), Madeline Bassett, Florence Craye, and Bingley, who filled in for Jeeves for a short time, join us from previous novels. A Bertie and Jeeves novel wouldn't be complete, of course, without an old school chum; in this case, it is Harold "Ginger" Winship, who is standing for the seat in the House of Commons for Market Snodsbury. Add in L.P. Runkle, Magnolia Glendennon, and Bertie's marvelous narration, and you have all the ingredients for a great Wodehouse farce, as Bertie preserves his bachelorhood and all else turns out for the best.

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881 to 1975) was a talented and prolific British comic writer of novels, short stories, plays, and musical comedies. He wrote 96 books, too many for most of us even to attempt to read from one author.

The Jeeves and Wooster stories are among his most popular works. They are light reading and are purely fictional comedy - based on life in Britain around or before the WWI era. There are approximately 18 books in the Jeeves series plus some short stories. All the stories are narrated by the "the wealthy, scatterbrained" Bertie Wooster and feature his butler Jeeves as a steadying force.

As pointed out by many others, "the plots are on the surface formulaic," but Wodehouse's genius lies in the ability to create a complicated web of characters and sub-plots that somehow have a happy ending. The plots often involve women, politics, and gambling. In many cases, a relative or a friend will create a situation which is inevitably solved through some unlikely and humorous set of events.

Jeeves, the butler or valet, is the most intelligent character in the stories with a superior education and intellect, far ahead of Bertie and most of the others. He seems to be everywhere anticipating problems and providing solutions. These stories are referred to as the "Jeeves" works. Wodehouse has suggested that Jeeves was not completely fictional but was based on an actual butler called Eugene Robinson, who he employed for the purpose of study. According to the author, he extricated Wodehouse from a real-life predicament.

In general, the books feature a humorous cast of characters with names that remind one of Dickens, such as Tuppy Glossop, Augustus (Gussie) Fink-Nottle, Bingo Little, Rev. Harold P. "Stinker" Pinker, Curate of Totleigh-in-the-Wold who plays rugby football, Freddie Widgeon, Harold Winship, who stands for parliament as the Conservative candidate in Market Snodsbury, Beefy Bingham, Parson in the East End, etc.

This is a quick light read of a few hundred pages. I thought it was very entertaining and had many twists and turns - as Bertie extricates himself from a potentially bad marriage engagement.

P.G. Wodehouse wrote yet another delightful tangled tale in this addition to the Blandings Castle saga. As usual, he weaves a celtic knot of plot in and around Blandings Castle, this time involving Lord Ickenham (a.k.a. Uncle Fred) and his young friend Bill Bailey (who of course comes under another name); Myra Schoonmaker and her father, James Schoonmaker; the Duke of Dunstable and his nephew, Archie Gilpin; Lavender Briggs, Lord Emsworth's new secretary; and the usual Blandings cast including Lord Emsworth, Lady Constance, and Beach. Two love stories interweave as well as once again a plot against Lord Emsworth's thrice-prize-winning pig, Empress of Blandings. Great fun!

Pongo Twistleton's Uncle Fred, the Fifth Earl of Ickenham, is dedicated, in his own words, to spreading sweetness and light wherever he goes (others have less complimentary words for what he does). In aid of this objective, he has previously appeared at Blandings Castle in the guise of the noted nerve specialist Sir Roderick Glossop, and been discovered as an impostor. While he remains a favorite of Clarence, the Ninth Earl of Emsworth and the proprietor of Blandings Castle, he is extremely unpopular with Clarence's sister Constance, who actually runs the place.

No Blandings Castle novel is complete, of course, without at least one impostor, sundered hearts that must be reunited, the threat or actuality of the theft of the Empress of Blandings (the Earl of Emsworth's prize Berkshire sow), and an abundance of farcical monkey business. Wodehouse supplies all of these, plus the presence of the two Earls, each one of the great characters in literature, and Alaric, the Duke of Dunstable, an impossibly rude man and the perfect foil for Uncle Fred.

All in all, a marvelously funny book by the greatest master of farce ever.

Service with a Smile is my second favorite of the P.G. Wodehouse books about the daffy doings at Blandings Castle, and is exceeded only by Pigs Have Wings.

If you have read any of the P.G. Wodehouse books about Blandings Castle, you know that the proprietor, Clarence, ninth Earl of Emsworth, is a simple man who simply wants to be left alone to contemplate his prize-winning pig, The Empress of Blandings, who has won the silver prize three years running in the fat pigs class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show. But he is beset by sisters who want to organize his life . . . and that of everyone else. The most frequently present of these sisters is Lady Constance Keeble, who is in residence in this book.

Lady Constance is a widow and has her eye on a wealthy American, James Schoonmaker, whose daughter, Myra, has been brought to Blandings Castle by Lady Constance to keep Myra from marrying a curate, a poor but honest man. Lady Constance has no truck with poor people and she's confident that James Schoonmaker would feel the same way.

The castle also contains Clarence's secretary, Lavender Briggs, who desperately wants to start up her own typing bureau but lacks capital; the Duke of Dunstable, who thinks everyone else is potty and wants to save a penny wherever he can; and Clarence's grandson, George, who has a new movie camera from his grandfather. All will play important roles in the developing plot.

The catalyst for this marvelous story is the effervescent Frederick Altamont Cornwallis Twistleton, fifth Earl of Ickenham. As an old friend of the Schoonmakers, Freddie decides to bring the young people together in holy matrimony. To further this course, Freddie introduces the curate, one Bill Bailey (about whom many song jokes follow), into the castle as a Brazilian business man who has something to do with Brazil nuts.

Freddie's plot is soon foiled though when Dunstable decides to grab the Empress by hook or by crook and Bill Bailey is blackmailed to help. How will the young lovers be brought together?

Ickenham is a less scrupulous version of Galahad Threepwood, Clarence's younger brother, who was such a fixture in the old Pelican Club. He sees fatheaded rich men as being likely sources of capital for poor, but deserving younger people. He also believes in love and soon has two sets of young lovers to sort out. He has a strategic advantage in this plot in that his reputation precedes him and all those in trouble quickly come to seek his counsel. In the process, that allows Freddie to pull the strings almost as well as the fairies do in some of Shakespeare's lightest comedies.

Like all of the best Wodehouse stories, this one positively reeks with humorous names (such as George Cyril Wellbeloved, Clarence's pig man), class humor (fat-headed upper class types being shorn), irony (the simple is exalted over the complex and pretentious) and never-ending humorous confrontations and contretemps.

Save this book for the next time you need cheering up. It's a perfect tonic!

This is one of my favorite Wodehouse books. It is one of his many delightful tales that do not concern Jeeves. This tale provides a nice contrast in that none of the major characters impersonate someone else. I also particularly recommend Leave it to Psmith and Hot Water.

I echo the previous reviewer who praises the publisher of this particular series. One quibble: What's with the ghastly cover art on almost every book? Something tasteful and attractive would be far more enticing.

Ingenious plot complexities, happy and unhappy coincidences, and satisfying resolutions. Tempts one to believe in "a great purposeful plan governing this sometimes seemingly chaotic world...." [p. 355] His usual funny, striking similes make for vivid descriptions of hilarious encounters and situations. Bill and Felicia each finally avoid marrying the wrong person--but it's not easy. The final unravelling of this threat, and it's complex intertwining with business crime and prosperity is ingenious.

Be sure to read all of Wodehouse--the Shakespeare of humor. And always try to buy the Overlook Press sewn-bound, hard-back edition on acid-free paper, in lovely typeface. Amazon's bargain price is lower than many paperbacks.

P.G. Wodehouse may be most famous for Jeeves, his perfect "gentleman's personal gentleman", but his trademark humor is evident in books that do not feature Jeeves and Wooster at all. Such is the case with "The Butler Did It" a light-hearted romp that takes itself only slightly seriously and allows the reader to join in on the fun.

Retired butler Augustus Keggs has made a living of serving the moneyed elite and has it in mind to financially secure his future. The manner in which he assumes to do so is by exposing a secret marriage tontine that was put together by a bunch of millionaires just before the Great Crash. The last offspring of these millionaires to escape the marriage game will inherit close to a million dollars. Keggs hopes to persuade one of the two remaining possible heirs to help things along in their favor, and to cut him a slice of the pie. But where money (and greed) is involved, things hardly ever go as smoothly as planned.

"The Butler Did It" is a fast-paced whimsical read, full of pithy dialogue and curious characters who poke fun at themselves as well as the art world and the social order. Wodehouse is a master of the understatement, crafting descriptions of characters that manage to be both subtle and laugh-out-loud funny. Reading Wodehouse is always a pleasant and amusing diversion from the ordinary.

Fans of P.G. Wodehouse often refer to Jeeves as a butler, but as Bertie Wooster reminds us, Jeeves is actually a gentleman's gentleman, a valet. But on occasion, Jeeves is pressed into service as a butler, and performs quite well.

Imagine the surprise that many P.G. Wodehouse fans have when they open The Butler Did It and find that the butler in question is a Mr. Augustus Keggs, the English butler for one J.J. Bunyan, an American multimillionaire. But this Keggs is a worthy character who fans of Jeeves will find to be very rewarding.

The book has one of the most intriguing plots in all of the Wodehouse novels. As the story opens, it is the night of September tenth, 1929, just before the collapse of the American stock market. Bunyan is entertaining a group of bored millionaires who are having a hard time deciding how to spend the money they are raking in. Among his guests is Mortimer Bayliss, his art curator, who cannot help but want to stir up the philistines. Bayliss proposes that the men each put up $50,000 with the proceeds of the tontine to go to the last of their sons to marry. Naturally, they have to keep the whole matter a secret or deny themselves the possibility of ever having grandchildren.

The book then glides forward in time to the mid 1950s in England as the end game of the tontine arrives. Mr. Keggs is a fellow tenant with Lord Uffenham (who has fallen on hard times), whom he formerly served as a butler, and his niece, Jane Benedick. Mr. Kegg's own niece, Emma, is engaged to marry Roscoe Bunyan, son of the late J.J. Bunyan, of the tontine. Like the wise and omniscient butler he is, Mr. Keggs had recorded the conversation that night and knows all about the tontine. The tontine is down to Roscoe and one other. Mr. Keggs decides that the time has come to intercede.

Jane is engaged to one Stanhope Twine, a hopeless sculptor, but the two cannot marry because Twine hasn't the funds. Mr. Keggs suggests to Roscoe that Twine is the other member of the tontine, and that Twine will marry in a heartbeat if he can get hold of some money. Keggs suggests that Roscoe buy a percentage of Twine's future earnings in exchange for a payment now. Keggs naturally hopes to be well paid for his advice, and is thoroughly annoyed when Roscoe only gives him fifty pounds for information about a tontine payment of over a million dollars.

Here's where the plot begins to unravel. Twine takes the money and jilts Jane. Roscoe jilts Emma, and Cupid is not exactly being served.

But Keggs has been playing a game. Twine isn't really in on the tontine.

Next, Keggs sells the information to Roscoe for $100,000. Roscoe doesn't want to pay and hires a detective to get back the agreement as well as Roscoe's letters to Emma.

In the meantime, Bill Hollister falls head over heels for Jane and she for him . . . having known each other as children. Bill Hollister's name really is in the tontine, and Mr. Keggs has to try to sort out all of the romances and the money. Ultimately, he succeeds . . . but in a way that no reader could hope to anticipate. It's a marvelously funny story with great plot complications.

To my way of thinking, this is one of the five best P.G. Wodehouse books I have read.

Capital! Capital! Capital!

For those of you with any interest in the entire oeuvre of P. G. Wodehouse, this one book is absolutely indispensable for your reading pleasure. It lists in alphabetical order all of the speaking characters of every PGW work (novel or short story) with helpful information about who they are and where else in other PGW books/stories these characters appear. There is a chronological listing of the British and American published works of PGW, as well as the complete alphabetical listing of titles by PGW. Additionally, there is a helpful list of the various PGW short story collection books with the titles of the short stories contained in each collection, again, both British and American since there were some variations in each collection.

The Wodehouse Millennium Concordance by Tony Ring is also very highly recommended for a multi-volume reference work on the characters in PGW. It may be harder (and more expensive) to find a complete set, but well worth it for the truly devoted PGW reader in your family.

P. G. Wodehouse was a very prolific writer. He wrote over 85 books and stories, many having the same characters and places in them. The most ardent Wodehouse reader and aficionado can get confused as to who did what, when and where. This excellent book makes all clear to the meanest intelligence. Professor Garrison has accomplished a monumental task that is easily read and understood. Almost every character in Wodehouse's many books is listed with information as to which book they occured in, their history, relatives and personalities. Professor Garrison has developed a code for each book title that includes an abbreviation of the title and the year of publication. This is very helpful because many Wodehouse readers want to know the date of publication so as to determine which book in a series came first and so on. The book titles are listed by date of publication in the back. There are also lists of members of the Drones, valets and butlers, and much else of interest to the Wodehouse fan. When one is writing a paper for one of the many Wodehouse Society chapters, this is the bible one turns to for information. This book was written mainly for the rabid Wodehouse fan but anyone who has heard of his books and is curious about the characters can get a brief sketch of even the most minor one. I would strongly recommend this book for even the most casual reader.