PG Wodehouse Books

The moment Wodehouse picked up his pen, English language scurried joyfully to bend to his will. And she was rewarded with this magical line from “The Coming of Bill.”

“The robins which, though not so well advertised, rise just as punctually as the lark, were beginning to sing as they made their simple toilets before setting out to attend to the early worm.”

There is not another author who can wield the language with the same authority and charm as P. G. Wodehouse. 

I was instantly smitten with “The Inimitable Jeeves,” a set of loosely interconnected stories that can at best be described as a semi-novel. That Wodehouse’s fantastic, fictional comedic world had a lot more to offer than Jeeves, and his “mentally negligible” aristocratic employer, Bertie Wooster was the second fortuitous discovery I made. “Plum Pie,” opened the doors to Blandings Castle for me; it made me an honorary member of the Drones Club and introduced me to the loquacious Mr. Mulliner, the goofball, Ukridge, and the wise old golf aficionado known only as the “Oldest Member.”

The entire humorous fictional world of “Plum,” as Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was affectionately known, lay invitingly before me. This set me on a quest to track down all his written work. I joyfully embarked on this project which took me almost three years to complete. 

San Jose Public Library and Palo Alto Public Library acquired a new member who would check out Wodehouse books not available in the Santa Clara County Library system. But it was Stanford University Green Library’s vast treasure chest that I cherished the most. For, in their collection, I found carefully preserved first edition books of some of Plum’s precious works – “Full Moon,” “Money for Nothing,” “Money in the Bank,” “Mulliner Nights,” “Golf without Tears,” and “Bill the Conqueror.” I can only describe my feelings as reverential joy when I handled those books.

Even the prestigious Green Library did not have all of PGW’s books. It was then I discovered  Project Gutenberg, a digital library with more than 75,000 eBooks. Out here, you will find some of the world’s greatest literature for which the U.S. copyright has expired.

I invite you to enjoy my review of every book Wodehouse has published, including several curated anthologies.