P. G. Wodehouse

P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) was an English comic novelist, born Pelham Grenville Wodehouse in Guildford, Surrey, on 15 October 1881, and the creator of Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves.

Wodehouse worked briefly at the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank before writing full time from 1902, the year his first book, the school story The Pothunters, was published by A & C Black. Across more than seventy years he published over ninety books, around forty plays and some two hundred short stories, and he wrote lyrics for musicals, working with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern. Psmith first appeared in Mike (1909), and the Blandings Castle saga began with Something Fresh (Methuen, 1915). Jeeves first appeared in a 1915 story; the first book-length collections were The Man with Two Left Feet (1917) and My Man Jeeves (Newnes, 1919). Herbert Jenkins then published the classic run, including The Inimitable Jeeves (1923), Carry On, Jeeves (1925), Thank You, Jeeves (1934), Right Ho, Jeeves (1934) and The Code of the Woosters (1938). Captured by the Germans at Le Touquet in 1940, he was interned for nearly a year, and his 1941 Berlin broadcasts caused lasting controversy in Britain. He settled in the United States in 1947, became an American citizen in 1955, was knighted in the 1975 New Year Honours and died at Southampton, New York, on 14 February 1975. A memorial stone to him was dedicated in Westminster Abbey on 20 September 2019.

For collectors

Key Wodehouse first editions for collectors include the Herbert Jenkins Jeeves books, notably Right Ho, Jeeves (1934) and The Code of the Woosters (1938), along with My Man Jeeves (Newnes, 1919), Something Fresh (Methuen, 1915) and his debut The Pothunters (A & C Black, 1902). The Inimitable Jeeves was first published by Herbert Jenkins in 1923, so a later Jenkins printing should not be mistaken for the first.