Wodehouse : A Life

by McCrum, Robert

• ISBN13: 9780393051599
• ISBN10: 0393051595
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-11-30
• Publisher: W W Norton & Co Inc

Summary

Product Description: A rich, vivid, and affectionate portrait of the most brilliant comic writer of the twentieth century. To Evelyn Waugh he was simply "the Master." He wrote ninety novels and story collections, and among his immortal characters are Jeeves, Psmith, and the Empress of Blandings (who is, of course, a pig). Equally impressive is the range of his devotees: Dorothy Parker, John Updike, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Salman Rushdie, John le Carré, and Seamus Heaney. Wodehouse had an extraordinary Broadway career, working with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, and even dared to rewrite Cole Porter's Anything Goes for the London stage. Robert McCrum's magisterial biography chronicles the achievements and shadows of a gilded life. The ill-judged broadcasts from Berlin, where Wodehouse was interned during World War II, produced a violent backlash in England and tarred him, unfairly, as a Nazi sympathizer. His long love affair with America was compromised by endless acrimony with the IRS. This is the book all Wodehouse fans have been waiting for; it eclipses all previous accounts of his life. 16 pages of illustrations.

Author Biography

Robert McCrum is the literary editor of the Observer and lives in London

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
Prologue: `Does aught befall you? It is good'	1	(8)
PART ONE: Getting Started (1881--1914)
`My childhood went like a breeze' (1881--1894)	9	(16)
`The Boy, What Will He Become?' (1894--1900)	25	(16)
`First-fruits of a Genius' (1900--1902)	41	(15)
`My wild lone' (1902--1904)	56	(12)
`I have Arrived' (1904--1909)	68	(21)
`I want to butt into the big league' (1909--1914)	89	(18)
PART TWO: Something New (1914--1929)
`An angel in human form' (1914--1915)	107	(17)
`Musical comedy was my dish' (1916-1918)	124	(18)
`A bloke called Bertie Wooster' (1918--1923)	142	(17)
`All dizzy with work' (1924--1927)	159	(12)
`I am planning a vast campaign' (1927--1929)	171	(18)
PART THREE: In the Chips (1930--1939)
`I altered all the characters to Earls and butlers' (1930--1931)	189	(17)
`My worst year since I started writing' (1932-1934)	206	(17)
`The one ideal spot in the world' (1934-1936)	223	(15)
`I am leading a very quiet life here' (1936-1937)	238	(12)
`I have become a biggish bug these days' (1937-1939)	250	(17)
PART FOUR: Disgrace (1940--1947)
`The hors d'oeuvre in Fate's banquet' (1940)	267	(18)
`Camp was really great fun' (1940--1941)	285	(16)
`It was a loony thing to do' (June 1941)	301	(11)
`The global howl' (July 1941)	312	(13)
`Now I shall have nothing to worry about until 1944' (1941--1943)	325	(15)
`I made an ass of myself, and must pay the penalty' (1943--1947)	340	(21)
PART FIVE: Atonement (1947--1975)
`My world has been shot to pieces' (1947--1951)	361	(18)
`Our slogan must be Entertainment' (1951--1954)	379	(12)
`I keep plugging away at my Art' (1955--1961)	391	(12)
`The Grand Old Man of English Literature' (1961--1975)	403	(13)
Epilogue: The Afterlife of P. G. Wodehouse	416	(4)
Notes	420	(84)
Books by P. G. Wodehouse	504	(4)
Select Bibliography	508	(3)
Index	511