P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters - Hardcover

Wodehouse, P G

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091796342 ISBN 13: 9780091796341

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2011

Synopsis

One of the funniest writers of the 20th century, PG Wodehouse shied away from a biography. Drawing on unpublished sources, this definitive edition of his letters gives an unrivalled insight into his life and his comic creations. Covering his schooldays, his family's financial troubles, his musical comedy career in New York and the unhappy episode when, interned by the Germans, he was accused of broadcasting Nazi propaganda, it is a book every fan of Jeeves and Wooster will want.

About this title

About the Author

The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Red and Mr Mulliner, P.G. Wodehouse was born in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. After two years with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank he became a full-time writer, contributing to a variety of periodicals including Punch and the Globe. He married in 1914. As well as his novels and short stories, he wrote lyrics for musical comedies with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, and at one time had five musicals running simultaneously on Broadway. His time in Hollywood also provided much source material for fiction. Sophie Ratcliffe is a tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford, specialising in nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature. She also reviews fiction and criticism for the national press. She lives in Oxford with her husband and young son.

Review

"Wodehouse said letters make "a wonderful oblique form for an autobiography," and Sophie Ratcliffe's expertly edited collection amply proves the point." Spectator "Anybody requiring evidence of how much work PG Wodehouse put into his comic prose should read his letters. In her introduction to this definitive compendium of Wodehouse's correspondence, Sophie Ratcliffe warns that [the letters] display only on occasions the extraordinary stylistic elan that one finds in fiction. Indeed they do, although when the extraordinary elan bubbles briefly to the surface, it is worth waiting for. But Wodehouse was a dedicated craftsman. He wanted his published words to make people laugh, and he devoted hour after hour to making them fit that purpose. One suspects his personal epistles were often a happy relief from that discipline." Scotland on Sunday "The great catastrophe of his life was of course, his broadcasting from Berlin in 1941, a slur on his reputation that never quite went goes away however often it is expunged. The whole saga is unravelled again here in Sophie Ratcliffe's excellent linking narrative." Daily Mail "Filtered by some excellent editing, [these letters] are full of interest" Mail on Sunday "Sophie Ratcliffe has done an exemplary job in editing these letters" Sunday Telegraph

Edition details

• Publisher: Hutchinson
• Publication date: 2011
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0091796342
• ISBN 13: 9780091796341
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 620