1881-1975
"It was one of those still evenings you get in the summer, when you can hear a snail clear its throat a mile away."
Birthplace
Guildford, Surrey
Education
Dulwich College
Other jobs
Wodehouse began work at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, but soon grew to hate it. By 1902 he was earning enough money as a freelance journalist and short story writer to leave. His first novel, The Pothunters, was published in the same year.
Did you know?
'PG' stood for Pelham Grenville. Wodehouse called it a "frightful label", and his garbled childhood pronunciation, 'Plum', became his affectionate nickname for the rest of his life.
Critical verdict
By the 1930s Wodehouse had gone from being a prolific contributor to newspapers and magazines to the foremost comic novelist writing in English. His creations, in particular the quixotic aristocrat Bertie Wooster and his sober valet, Jeeves, and the dreamy, pig-obsessed Earl of Emsworth, rapidly gained a place in the popular consciousness, and the books of their adventures sold by the millions worldwide. Wodehouse also wrote countless song lyrics, and is credited with being one of the fathers of the American musical. His fortunes were to change in 1940, however, when he was captured by German forces in occupied France and agreed to broadcast a series of talks on German radio. Wodehouse was in fact being manipulated by the Nazi propaganda machine, and these light-hearted broadcasts provoked a vicious reaction from politicians and journalists in Britain. Confused and embarrassed by accusations of treason, Wodehouse went back to America and continued to write, but his reputation took a long time to recover and he never returned to his native country. A knighthood just before his death in 1975 went some way towards an official apology, however, and the popularity of the work itself never really went into eclipse. Today Wodehouse is as loved as ever, and his vivid prose style and unique comic invention are recognised as major contributions to English fiction.
Recommended works
Wodehouse published over a hundred books, most of which are still in print. Among the best Jeeves and Wooster novels and collections are The Code of the Woosters and Joy in the Morning, while the finest Emsworth books include Summer Lightning and Heavy Weather. Two early novels worth exploring are Mike and Psmith in the City, while Ukridge and Uncle Fred in the Springtime features another of Wodehouse's best-loved characters, Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge (pronounced Fanshawe Ewkridge). For an airbrushed but nonetheless fascinating glimpse of the man himself see the autobiographical Performing Flea and Over Seventy.
Influences
Wodehouse liked to sprinkle references to classic authors throughout his work, and particularly enjoyed deploying his own uniquely garbled quotations from Shakespeare. Dickens, Kipling and Jerome K Jerome also appear to have shaped his writing, as did the operettas of Gilbert and Sullivan.
Now read on
George Orwell's essay, 'In Defence of PG Wodehouse', is one of the earliest accounts of the novels, and also offers a level-headed assessment of the war broadcasts. Broadway, Jeeves? follows the ill-fated New York production of Alan Ayckbourn and Andrew Lloyd-Webber's musical By Jeeves! in 2001, as told by the actor Martin Jarvis.
Adaptations
The Jeeves and Wooster stories were adapted by the BBC in the 1960s, with Ian Carmichael as Bertie and Dennis Price as Jeeves, and by Granada in the 1990s, with Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry. Plum's War, a play by Michael Butt transmitted by Radio 4 in 1999, dramatised the recording of the Berlin broadcasts, and starred Benjamin Whitrow as Wodehouse.
Recommended biography
Wodehouse: A Life by Robert McCrum (2004) is a masterly study of Wodehouse's achievement, and includes a scrupulous and clear-eyed examination of the wartime scandal which dispenses with much of the accumulated hyperbole. Wodehouse emerges as political innocent who was guilty only of errors of judgement, and whose determination to write on in the face of adversity provided his final vindication.
Useful links and work online
Work online
· Full text of short story collection The Man Upstairs and Other Stories, and The Man with Two Left Feet, and the novel Uneasy Money
· Transcripts of the Berlin Broadcasts
· Free audiobook of Psmith in the City
Background
· Useful information on the author, sponsored by the Wodehouse Society
· The Wodehouse Society's UK chapter
· A comprehensive guide to the complete works of PG Wodehouse, with a fully illustrated bibliography
· In Defence of PG Wodehouse