P.G. Wodehouse

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975) was probably one of the funniest and most graceful writers in the English language, and what is even more unfair to 20th Century literature, he was also one of the most prolific as well. And to get something out of the way that sometimes causes hesitation, his last name is pronounce WOOD-howss. A child of the British Empire in its dying days, Wodehouse was a bored young banker who began writing school stories in the great English tradition of Thomas Hughes and Rudyard Kipling and many others. He switched to comic stories and began to extend his true genius. The most famous creations, of course, are Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves, but lovers of Wodehouse also embrace Lord Emsworth, Mr. Mulliner, Psmith, and many, many others.

Wodehouse, with collaborators, wrote many Broadway comedies during a sojourn to New York City in the 1920s — few have captured the Jazz Age better — and he had some disastrous encounters with Hollywood that he used for his later fiction. He moved to France in the 1930s for tax purposes, was captured by the Germans in 1940, interned, and used for broadcast propaganda purposes in an innocuous but lasting way. George Orwell wrote a famous and typically incisive essay, “In Defense of P.G. Wodehouse,” defending him. After the war, because of the attacks on him and his writing, Wodehouse exiled himself to the United States for the rest of his life, almost thirty years. He became an American citizen in 1955. He never stopped writing, but his works will always be seen in the romantic light of the 1920s. He died and is buried in Remensenburg Presbyterian churchyard, Southhampton, Long Island.

I carry a small but essential amount of his books, enough to feed the sudden craving for light perfection or to nurture the taste of the lucky first-time reader. Be prepared to laugh out loud, shake your head in wonder, and see humanity in a kinder light.