Reviews for The Uncollected Wodehouse

The average rating for The Uncollected Wodehouse based on 2 reviews is 3.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2021-09-03 00:00:00 Aaron Montgomery Bottom line first: This may not be Plummy at his best. He will get better. For the true believer and the first-time reader Uncollected Wodehouse is fun. This collection will deliver regular smiles. He is, as always very family friendly. Somewhere there are English doctoral studies analyzing the subtle and nuanced symbology and subtext of the many works of P.G (Plummy) Wodehouse. God bless the oh so earnest degree seeking souls penning these brilliant exercises. And blessed too be those of their long-suffering, serious, hoary headed thesis committee members. And please, keep them far away from us. All well-meaning souls no doubt, but rather wide of the mark. Let there be no confusion, Plummy was writing to get and keep bread and maybe a little more on the family groaning board. If we are to be honest a lot of the selections here-in collected, were written to stave off the deadly dull drudge-filled hours that was his life as a middling bank clerk The Uncollected Wodehouse edited by his biographer David Jasen and with a forward by his one-time Editor (at Punch) Malcolm Muggeridge is a something many collections are not, cohesive. It is a sampling of an author working very hard to write bill paying ephemera. The full Wodehouse shelf is 75 years of a man driven to write fun and funny tales. Here he is yet young. Works are uneven in the sense that the author has not fully matured into his later mastery of feather light humor. Most of these selections were written for magazines, and include a lot of his firsts. For example, his first selection published in the venerable humor magazine Punch. Others represent him casting about for his voice, for example his only mystery. We can read his first upstairs downstairs humor based on a butler, well before the inimical Jeeves shimmers onto the page. A portrait of the author as a young man, sharing his sense of humor and determined to use it to keep body and soul together.

Review # 2 was written on 2020-07-03 00:00:00 Adrian Hill A nice diversion for fans of Wodehouse, this collection includes some of his early short stories. Many of the prototypes for Wodehouse's better known characters are here, including a somewhat simpleminded young man of independent means and a self-effacing but nonetheless formidable butler. There is also a murder mystery in which Wodehouse pokes lighthearted fun at the Sherlock Holmes tradition.