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| | {{Image|P.G. Wodehouse, 1930.jpg|350px|right|P. G. Wodehouse in 1930.}} |
| | '''Pelham Grenville Wodehouse''' (October 15, 1881, Guildford, England – February 14, 1975, Remsenburg, Long Island, New York), generally known as '''P.G. Wodehouse''', pronounced "Woodhouse",<ref><small>In ''Bring on the Girls, The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy'', a joint autobiography by Wodehouse and his longtime collaborator [[Guy Bolton]], we have the following: |
| | <blockquote> |
| | <p>On the opening night Jerry Kern came over to where Bolton stood leaning on the back-rail, his face pale, his lips moving as if in prayer.</p> |
| | <p>'How do you think it's going?' he asked.</p> |
| | <p>Guy came out of his trance.</p> |
| | <p>'I'm too numb to tell. There's a man in large spectacles over there who seems to be enjoying it.</p> |
| | <p>Jerry glanced in the direction indicated.</p><p>'Wodehouse,' he said.'</p><p>I suppose it is,' said Guy, 'but that's only to be expected on an opening night. The question is, what's it going to be like tomorrow?'</p><p>'What on earth are you talking about?'</p><p>'You said it's a good house.</p><p>'I didn't. I said Woodhouse.'</p><p>(For the benefit of the uninitiated, that is the way it is pronounced.)</p> |
| | </blockquote> |
| | ''Bring on the Girls, The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy'', by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, collected with two other autobiographical works by Wodehouse in ''Wodehouse on Wodehouse'', Penguin Books Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1981, page 16</small></ref> |
| | and called '''Plum''' by his friends, was an enormously popular writer of humorous fiction whose improbably long artistic career stretched from the latter years of the reign of [[Queen Victoria]] into the age of the [[Concorde]] supersonic jetliner. Although most of Wodehouse's works, whether novels or short stories, are set in the upper-class society of a somewhat unlikely innocent and golden era of pre-World War II England, and he is considered by most readers to be a quintessentially British writer, he spent most of his adult life in France and the United States. A jealous British writer, [[Sean O'Casey]], once famously derided him as being "English literature's performing flea", a description that the supremely serene Wodehouse came to relish, later using ''Performing Flea'' as the title of a collection of his letters. |
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| '''Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse''', [[Order of the British Empire|KBE]] ([[15 October]] [[1881]] – [[14 February]] [[1975]]) a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely-read over 30 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]] [[England|English]] upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.
| | Wodehouse today is best known for his two separate series of stories about [[Jeeves]], the incomparably capable "gentleman's gentleman" to [[Bertie Wooster]], and about [[Blandings Castle]], the stately home to the befogged [[backwoods peer]] [[Lord Emsworth]] and his prize pig, [[Empress of Blandings|the Empress of Blandings]]. He was, however, also a prolific playwright and lyricist who, particularly in his younger days, was part-author and/or writer of 15 plays and of 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies. And, in addition to the Jeeves and Blandings Castle books, he had several other series about repeating characters. |
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| An acknowledged master of [[English language|English]] [[prose]], Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as [[Hilaire Belloc]], [[Evelyn Waugh]] and [[Rudyard Kipling]] and by modern 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.
| | Light-hearted and almost totally divorced from reality, most of Wodehouse's works, particularly his novels, are of a breathtaking complexity and multiplicity of subplots, as besotted young lovers meet, are thwarted in their amours by tyrannical aunts, and are finally happily united by the machinations of some worldly and competent elder such as [[Uncle Fred]], the eccentric Earl of Ickenham, the protagonist of one of Wodehouse's many series, or [[Galahad Threepwood|the Hon. Galahad Threepwood]], Lord Emsworth's unmarried younger brother. |
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| 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 comedy|musical comedies]]. He worked with [[Cole Porter]] on the [[Musical theater|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 [[George Gershwin|Gershwin]] - [[Sigmund Romberg|Romberg]] musical ''[[Rosalie]]'' (1928), and collaborated with [[Rudolph Friml]] on a musical version of ''[[The Three Musketeers (musical)|The Three Musketeers]]'' (1928).
| | Wodehouse's general writing style might be termed straight-faced tongue-in-cheek in which he made frequent use of goofy or improbable similes and metaphors such as: |
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| ==Life==
| | *"Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces." <ref>''The Code of the Woosters'', Chapter 2</ref> |
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| Wodehouse, called "Plum" by most family and friends, was born prematurely to Eleanor Wodehouse (née Deane) whilst she was visiting [[Guildford]]. His father Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845–1929) was a British judge in [[Hong Kong]]. The Wodehouse family had been settled in [[Norfolk]] for many centuries. Wodehouse's great-grandfather Reverend Philip Wodehouse was the second son of [[Sir Armine Wodehouse, 5th Baronet]], whose eldest son [[John Wodehouse, 1st Baron Wodehouse]], was the ancestor of the [[Earl of Kimberley|Earls of Kimberley]].
| | *"Like so many substantial Americans, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag." <ref>''Wodehouse at Work'', Chapter 2</ref> |
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| When he was just 3 years old, Wodehouse was brought back to England and placed in the care of a nanny. He attended various boarding schools and, between the ages of three and 15 years, saw his parents for barely 6 months in total. ([[#McCrum|McCrum, 2004, pp 14-15]]) Wodehouse grew very close to his brother, who shared his love for art. Wodehouse filled the voids in his life by writing relentlessly. He spent quite a few of his school holidays with one aunt or another; it has been speculated that this gave him a healthy horror of the "gaggle of aunts", reflected in [[Bertie Wooster]]'s formidable aunts [[Agatha Gregson|Agatha]] and [[Dahlia Travers|Dahlia]], as well as [[Lady Constance Keeble]]'s tyranny over her many nieces and nephews in the [[Blandings Castle]] series.
| | *"It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine." <ref>Ibid., chapter 8—all three quotations from ''The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations'', by J.M and M.J. Cohen, Penguin Books, Harmonsworth, Middlesex, England, 1978, page 245</ref> |
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| Wodehouse was educated at [[Dulwich College]], where the library is now named after him, but his anticipated progression to university was stymied by family financial problems. Subsequently he worked for the [[HSBC|Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank]] in London (now known as HSBC) for two years, though he was never interested in banking as a career. He wrote part-time while working in the bank, eventually proving successful enough to take up writing as a full-time profession. He was a journalist with ''The Globe'' (a defunct English newspaper) for some years before moving to New York, where he worked for a time as theatre critic of ''[[The New Yorker]]'', collaborated with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern on several musical comedies, and began publishing short stories and novels. In the 1930s, he had two brief stints as a screenwriter in [[Hollywood]], where he claimed he was greatly over-paid. Many of his novels were also serialised in magazines such as ''[[The Saturday Evening Post]]'' and ''[[Strand Magazine|The Strand]]'', which also paid well.
| | == References == |
| | | <references/> |
| Wodehouse married Ethel Wayman in [[1914]], gaining a stepdaughter, Leonora. He had no biological children, perhaps owing to having contracted [[mumps]] as a young man.
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| == Life in France == | |
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| Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1914 onward he shared his time between England and the United States. In 1934, he took up residence in France, to avoid double taxation on his earnings by the tax authorities in Britain and the US. He was also profoundly uninterested in politics and world affairs. When [[World War II]] broke out in 1939 he remained at his seaside home in [[Le Touquet]], [[France]], instead of returning to England, apparently failing to recognise the seriousness of the conflict. He was subsequently taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940 and interned by them for a year, first in [[Belgium]], then at Tost (now [[Toszek]]) in [[Upper Silesia]] (now in [[Poland]]). (He is recorded as saying, "If this is Upper Silesia, one must wonder what Lower Silesia must be like...".)
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| While at Tost, he entertained his fellow prisoners with witty dialogues. After being released from internment, a few months short of his 60th birthday, he used these dialogues as a basis for a series of radio broadcasts aimed at America (but not England) that the Germans persuaded him to make from [[Berlin]]. Wartime England was in no mood for light-hearted banter, however, and the broadcasts led to many accusations of [[collaboration]] with the [[Nazi]]s and even treason. Some libraries banned his books. Foremost among his critics was [[A. A. Milne]], author of the [[Winnie the Pooh]] books; Wodehouse got some revenge by creating a ridiculous character named Timothy Bobbin, who starred in parodies of some of Milne's children's poetry. Among Wodehouse's defenders were [[Evelyn Waugh]] and [[George Orwell]] (see article by Orwell[http://www.drones.com/orwell.html]). An investigation by the British security service [[MI5]] concluded that Wodehouse was naive and foolish but not a traitor.<ref>[[Adrian Weale|Weale, Adrian]] (1994), ''Renegades: Hitler's Englishmen'', ISBN 0-297-81488-5.</ref>
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| The criticism led Wodehouse and his wife to move permanently to New York. Apart from Leonora, who died during Wodehouse's internment in Germany, they had no children. He became an American citizen in 1955 and never returned to his homeland, spending the remainder of his life in [[Remsenburg, New York|Remsenburg]], Long Island.
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| == Later life ==
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| He was made a [[Order of the British Empire|Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire]] (KBE) shortly before his death at the age of 93. It is widely believed that the honour was not given earlier because of lingering resentment about the German broadcasts. In a [[BBC]] interview he said that he had no ambitions left now that he had been knighted and there was a waxwork of him in [[Madame Tussauds|Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum]].
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| In 2000, the [[Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize]] was established and named in honour of PG Wodehouse and awards an annual prize for the finest example in the UK of comic writing.
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| ==Writing style==
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| Wodehouse took a modest attitude to his own works. In ''[[Over Seventy]]'' (1957) he wrote:
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| :"I go in for what is known in the trade as 'light writing' and those who do that – humorists they are sometimes called – are looked down upon by the intelligentsia and sneered at."
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| In the same article, Wodehouse names some contemporary humorists whom he held in high regard. These include Frank Sullivan, [[A. P. Herbert]], and [[Alex Atkinson]].
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| ===Characters===
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| Wodehouse's characters, however, were not always popular with the establishment, notably the foppish foolishness of [[Bertie Wooster]]. Papers released by the [[Public Record Office]] have disclosed that when P. G. Wodehouse was recommended in 1967 for a [[Order of the Companions of Honour|Companion of Honour]], Sir Patrick Dean, the British ambassador in Washington, argued that it "would also give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which we are doing our best to eradicate."
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| Wodehouse's characters are often eccentric, with peculiar attachments, such as to pigs ([[Lord Emsworth]]), newts ([[Gussie Fink-Nottle]]), or socks ([[Archibald Mulliner]]). His "mentally negligible" good-natured characters invariably make their lot worse by their half-witted schemes to improve a bad situation.
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| Wodehouse's aristocrats, however, embody many of the comic attributes that characterize buffoons. In many cases the classic eccentricities of Wodehouse's upperclass give rise to plot complications.
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| Relatives, especially aunts and uncles, are commonly depicted with an exaggerated power to help or impede marriage or financial prospects, or simply to make life miserable. Friends are often more a trouble than a comfort in Wodehouse stories: the main character is typically being placed in a most painful situation just to please a friend. Antagonists (particularly rivals in love) are frequently terrifying and just as often get their come-uppance in a delicious fashion.
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| [[Police]]men and [[magistrate]]s are typically portrayed as threatening, yet easy to fool, often through the simple expedient of giving a false name. A recurring motif is the theft of policemen's helmets.
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| In a manner going back to the stock characters of Roman comedy (such as [[Plautus]]), Wodehouse's servants are frequently far cleverer than their masters. This is quintessentially true with [[Jeeves]], who always pulls Bertie Wooster out of the direst scrapes. It recurs elsewhere, such as the efficient (though despised) [[Rupert Baxter|Baxter]], secretary to the befogged [[Lord Emsworth]].
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| ===Plots===
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| Although his plots are on the surface formulaic, Wodehouse's genius lies in the tangled layers of comedic complications that the characters must endure to reach the invariable happy ending. Typically, a relative or friend makes some demand that forces a character into a bizarre situation that seems impossible to recover from, only to resolve itself in a clever and satisfying finale. The layers pile up thickly in the longer works, with a character getting into multiple dangerous situations by mid-story. An outstanding example of this is ''[[The Code of the Woosters]]'' where most of the chapters have an essential plot point reversed in the last sentence, catapulting the characters forward into greater diplomatic disasters.
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| Engagements are a common theme in Wodehouse stories. A man may be unable to become engaged to the woman he loves due to some impediment. Just as often, he becomes unwillingly, or even accidentally, engaged to a woman he does not love and needs to find some back-door way out other than breaking it off directly (which goes against a gentleman's code of honour). A case in point is Freddie in ''Something Fresh'', where his engagement to Miss Peters apparently broke off after she eloped with George Emerson. A very sad situation of a girl choosing a spirited man instead of her dim witted fiancé was cleverly made light hearted by showing how Freddie could not care less, as he was more interested in meeting the revered writer of detective stories: Ashe Marson and so on.
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| Assumed identities and resulting confusion are particularly common in the Blandings books.
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| Gambling often plays a large role in Wodehouse plots, typically with someone manipulating the outcome of the wager.
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| Another subject which features strongly in Wodehouse's plots is [[Alcoholic beverage|alcohol]], and many plots revolve around the tipsiness of a major character. It is clear that Wodehouse himself was fond of a tipple, and he enumerated what many people consider as the definitive list of hangovers: the Broken Compass, the Sewing Machine, the Comet, the Atomic, the Cement Mixer and the Gremlin Boogie. Furthermore, he makes several references to a drink called the "May Queen",<ref>or more fully: "Tomorrow'll be of all the year the maddest, merriest day, for I'm to be the Queen of the May, mother, the Queen of the May"</ref> described by [[Uncle Fred]] as "any good dry champagne, to which is added liqueur brandy, armagnac, kummel, yellow chartreuse, and old stout, to taste", which inspires several characters to acts of daring, such as proposing to their true loves.
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| ==Writings==
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| {{Main|List of books by P. G. Wodehouse}}
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| Wodehouse was a prolific author, writing ninety-six books in a career spanning from 1902 to 1975. His works include novels, collections of short stories, and a musical comedy. Many characters and locations appear repeatedly throughout his short stories and novels, leading readers to classify his work by "series", being<!--ALPHA ORDER BY SERIES NAME, AS ON MAIN ARTICLE [[List of books by P. G. Wodehouse]]-->:
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| * The [[Blandings Castle]] stories (later dubbed "the Blandings Castle Saga" by Wodehouse<REF>
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| {{Cite book
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| | author = Wodehouse, P. G.
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| | year = 1969 <!--published 1969, written 1968, "fifty-three years ago" after 1915-->
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| | chapter = Preface [new since the 1969 edition]
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| | title = Something Fresh
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| | quote = ''Something Fresh'' was the first of what I might call – in fact, I will call – the Blandings Castle Saga.
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| }}
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| </REF>), about the upper-class inhabitants of the fictional rural Blandings Castle. Includes the eccentric [[Clarence Threepwood, 9th Earl of Emsworth|Lord Emsworth]], obsessed by his prize-winning pig, the "[[Empress of Blandings]]", and at one point by his equally prize-winning pumpkin ("Blandings' Hope", but, mockingly, "Percy" to Emsworth's unappreciative second son [[Freddie Threepwood]]).
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| * The [[Drones Club]] stories, about the mishaps of certain members of a raucous social club for London's idle rich. Born in the Jeeves stories, it became its own informal series of short stories, mostly featuring club members [[Freddie Widgeon]] or [[Bingo Little]], plus a cast of recurrent bit players such as Club millionaire [[Oofy Prosser]].
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| * The Golf and [[Oldest Member]] stories. They are built around one of Wodehouse's passions, the sport of [[golf]], which all characters involved consider the only important pursuit in life. The Oldest Member of the golf course clubhouse tells most of them.
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| * The [[Jeeves]] and Wooster stories, narrated by the wealthy, scatterbrained [[Bertie Wooster]]. A number of stories and novels that recount the improbable and unfortunate situations in which he and his friends find themselves and the manner in which his ingenious [[valet]] Jeeves is always able to extricate them. Collectively called "the Jeeves stories", or "Jeeves and Wooster", they are Wodehouse's most famous. The Jeeves stories are a valuable compendium of pre-World War II [[English slang]] in use, perhaps most closely mirrored in [[American literature]], although at a different social level, by the work of [[Damon Runyon]].
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| * The [[Mr Mulliner]] stories, about a long-winded pub raconteur who tells outrageous stories about his family, all surnamed Mulliner. His sometimes unwilling listeners are always identified solely by their drinks, e.g., a "Hot Scotch and Lemon" or a "Double Whisky and Splash".
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| * The [[Psmith]] stories, about an ingenious jack-of-all-trades with a charming, exaggeratedly refined manner. The final Psmith story, ''[[Leave it to Psmith]]'', overlaps the Blandings stories in that Psmith works for Lord Emsworth, lives for a time at Blandings Castle, and becomes a friend of [[Freddie Threepwood]].
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| * The School stories, which launched Wodehouse's career with their comparative realism. They are often located at the fictional public schools of [[St. Austin's]] or [[Wrykyn]].
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| * The [[Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge|Ukridge]] stories, about the charming but unprincipled Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, always looking to enlarge his income through the reluctant assistance of his friend in his schemes.
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| * The [[Uncle Fred]] stories, about the eccentric Earl of Ickenham. Whenever he can escape his wife's chaperonage, he likes to spread what he calls "sweetness and light" and others are likely to call chaos. His escapades, always involving impersonations of some sort, are usually told from the viewpoint of his nephew and reluctant companion [[Pongo Twistleton|Reginald "Pongo" Twistleton]]. Several times he performs his "art" at [[Blandings Castle]].
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| ==Adaptations==
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| Considering the extent of his success, there have been comparatively few adaptations of Wodehouse's works, in part because he was reluctant to do so:
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| Both the Blandings and Jeeves stories have been adapted as [[BBC]] television series: the Jeeves series has been adapted twice, once in the 1960s (for the BBC), with the title ''[[World of Wooster]]'', starring [[Ian Carmichael]] as Bertie Wooster, and [[Dennis Price]] as Jeeves—and again in the 1990s (by [[Granada Television]] for [[ITV]]), with the title ''[[Jeeves and Wooster]]'', starring [[Hugh Laurie]] as Bertie and [[Stephen Fry]] as Jeeves. [[David Niven]] and [[Arthur Treacher]] also starred as Bertie and Jeeves, respectively, in a short 1930s film that was a very loose adaptation of ''Thank You, Jeeves'', and Treacher played Jeeves without Bertie in an original sequel, ''Step Lively, Jeeves''.
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| In 1975, [[Andrew Lloyd Webber]] made a musical, originally titled ''Jeeves''. In 1996, it was rewritten as the more successful ''[[By Jeeves]]'', which made it to Broadway, and a performance recorded as a video film, also shown on TV.
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| A version of ''[[Heavy Weather (TV)|Heavy Weather]]'' was filmed by the [[BBC]] in [[1995]] starring [[Peter O'Toole]] as [[Lord Emsworth]] and [[Richard Briers]], again, as Lord Emsworth's brother, [[Galahad Threepwood]].
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| ==References ==
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Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (October 15, 1881, Guildford, England – February 14, 1975, Remsenburg, Long Island, New York), generally known as P.G. Wodehouse, pronounced "Woodhouse",[1]
and called Plum by his friends, was an enormously popular writer of humorous fiction whose improbably long artistic career stretched from the latter years of the reign of Queen Victoria into the age of the Concorde supersonic jetliner. Although most of Wodehouse's works, whether novels or short stories, are set in the upper-class society of a somewhat unlikely innocent and golden era of pre-World War II England, and he is considered by most readers to be a quintessentially British writer, he spent most of his adult life in France and the United States. A jealous British writer, Sean O'Casey, once famously derided him as being "English literature's performing flea", a description that the supremely serene Wodehouse came to relish, later using Performing Flea as the title of a collection of his letters.
Wodehouse today is best known for his two separate series of stories about Jeeves, the incomparably capable "gentleman's gentleman" to Bertie Wooster, and about Blandings Castle, the stately home to the befogged backwoods peer Lord Emsworth and his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings. He was, however, also a prolific playwright and lyricist who, particularly in his younger days, was part-author and/or writer of 15 plays and of 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies. And, in addition to the Jeeves and Blandings Castle books, he had several other series about repeating characters.
Light-hearted and almost totally divorced from reality, most of Wodehouse's works, particularly his novels, are of a breathtaking complexity and multiplicity of subplots, as besotted young lovers meet, are thwarted in their amours by tyrannical aunts, and are finally happily united by the machinations of some worldly and competent elder such as Uncle Fred, the eccentric Earl of Ickenham, the protagonist of one of Wodehouse's many series, or the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, Lord Emsworth's unmarried younger brother.
Wodehouse's general writing style might be termed straight-faced tongue-in-cheek in which he made frequent use of goofy or improbable similes and metaphors such as:
- "Big chap with a small moustache and the sort of eye that can open an oyster at sixty paces." [2]
- "Like so many substantial Americans, he had married young and kept on marrying, springing from blonde to blonde like the chamois of the Alps leaping from crag to crag." [3]
- "It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine." [4]
References
- ↑ In Bring on the Girls, The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy, a joint autobiography by Wodehouse and his longtime collaborator Guy Bolton, we have the following:
On the opening night Jerry Kern came over to where Bolton stood leaning on the back-rail, his face pale, his lips moving as if in prayer.
'How do you think it's going?' he asked.
Guy came out of his trance.
'I'm too numb to tell. There's a man in large spectacles over there who seems to be enjoying it.
Jerry glanced in the direction indicated.
'Wodehouse,' he said.'
I suppose it is,' said Guy, 'but that's only to be expected on an opening night. The question is, what's it going to be like tomorrow?'
'What on earth are you talking about?'
'You said it's a good house.
'I didn't. I said Woodhouse.'
(For the benefit of the uninitiated, that is the way it is pronounced.)
Bring on the Girls, The Improbable Story of Our Life in Musical Comedy, by P.G. Wodehouse and Guy Bolton, collected with two other autobiographical works by Wodehouse in Wodehouse on Wodehouse, Penguin Books Ltd., Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England, 1981, page 16
- ↑ The Code of the Woosters, Chapter 2
- ↑ Wodehouse at Work, Chapter 2
- ↑ Ibid., chapter 8—all three quotations from The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Quotations, by J.M and M.J. Cohen, Penguin Books, Harmonsworth, Middlesex, England, 1978, page 245
