Barmy in Wonderland

These early stories, first published together in 1917, show Wodehouse perfecting his craft. Characters include a talking dog, a private eye who wants to be an actor, a bank clerk who cannot dance, an ugly policeman, a baseball-mad businessman, and a black cat. The star attraction of the volume for most readers will probably be ‘Extricating Young Gussie’, the first story to feature Jeeves, though i...

Take a pig, a fat-headed earl, a country house, several pairs of frustrated lovers, some scheming outsiders, and all sorts of people who aren’t who they say they are. Mix thoroughly and apply the Wodehouse magic. The result is the lightest of literary soufflées, another instalment in the long-running saga of the Threepwood family, including the head of the clan, Lord Emsworth, his virago sister, L...

A collection of stories in which familiar characters and places are reintroduced in unfamiliar circumstances, reminding us - if we need reminding - of their author's limitless powers of comic invention. In the title story - one of Wodehouse's longest and best shorter fictions - Lord Emsworth takes his revenge on his ghastly secretary, the Efficient Baxter, setting off a wave of similar r...

A classic musical comedy plot turned into a novel, The Prince and Betty is the story of a man who gives up everything for his girl. Fortunately, she chances to be the stepdaughter of a millionaire. John Maude and Betty Silver are in love, but when John turns out to be heir to the principality of Mervo, a small Mediterranean island not a thousand miles from Monte Carlo, he finds himself ensnared...

There is trouble afoot at Blandings Castle, with publishing magnate Lord Tilbury after Galahad Threepwood's sensational memoirs, and Sir Gregory Parsloe-Parsloe in pursuit of Lord Emsworth's pig yet again. Against this background, Galahad's fearsome sisters, Julia and Constance, try to sabotage the marriage of Julia's son, Ronnie, to chorus girl Sue Brown, while mustachioed pri...

Will playboy Biffy avoid trouble until his thirtieth birthday in a few days’ time and inherit a vast fortune from his teetotal godfather who has stipulated that he must stay sober and out of prison to get it? Not if scheming Lord Tilbury, brother of the said godfather, has anything to do with it. Already rich, Tilbury can always use a few more million – so, knowing Biffy’s weakness for wines and s...

Monty Bodkin has returned to London from Hollywood, leaving Sandy Miller, his secretary there, heartbroken, because Monty loves English hockey international Gertrude Butterwick instead of her. Holding down a job for a year was the condition laid down by Gertrude's father before Monty and Gertrude could be married, a condition Monty has unexpectedly fulfilled by blackmailing Hollywood movie mo...

This substantial collection of early stories displays a variety of tone, style and setting which may surprise readers familiar only with the author’s later light comedies of aristocratic life. Wodehouse’s well-known gift for satisfying plots and comic surprises is evident on every page, but there are also signs of his debt to earlier writers in the realistic tradition. Set mainly in London or New ...

T. Paterson Frisby, the dyspeptic American financier, loves every cent of his twenty million dollars. Lady Vera Mace loves T. Paterson Frisby whose secretary, Berry Conway, loves Frisby’s niece, Ann Moon. Meanwhile, Lady Vera’s nephew, ‘Biscuit’ Biskerton, begins by loving Frisby’s niece but ends by loving Frisby’s niece’s friend, Kitchie Valentine. At the story’s conclusion everyone is happy – ex...

When a man needs only two hundred pounds to marry his cook and buy a public house, one would expect his life to be trouble free, but the fifth Earl of Shortlands has to reckon with his haughty daughter, Lady Adela, and Mervyn Spink, his butler, who also happens to be his rival in love. Mike Cardinal offers to sort out the problem by pretending to be Stanwood Cobbold but his way is blocked by Spink...