The Best of Wodehouse: An Anthology

As one who collects Everyman Editions I eagerly purchased The Best of Wodehouse a beautiful entry in the famous series. P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) lived a long life in both England and the United States. He was taken into custody by the Nazis while living in France but survived the experience. Wodehouse was a literary powerhouse producing over 300 short stories, many novels, screenplays, Broadway plays, and nonfiction works. A portion of his autobiographical sketch :"Over Seventy" is included in this volume. It recounts his career and working techniques. And now the contents...The Code of the Woosters is a wild romp at a country estate in pre-World War II England. The story is narrated by Bertie Wooster the inept young aristocrat who flits from party to party, relative's home to relative's home getting into all kinds of absurd screwball type situations. He is assisted by his famous butler Jeeves who helps extricate Bertie from all kinds of hilarious scrapes! In this long story the pair seeks to steel a cream jug! Uncle Fred in the Springtime is a story of an aristocrat who likes to play in London while his wife is away on holiday. This is part of the Blanding Castle series. It includes the story of how the rescue was essayed of Empress the huge pig belonging to Lord Emsworth. The Duke of Dunstable is accused of making the pig hoist! Many complications and characters ensue as the story rushes to a wild conclusion! My favorite part of the 800 page anthology are the fourteen excellent short stories featuring Bertie and Jeeves. These two characters are among the most famous in all of English fiction and deservedly so! Wodehouse has created his own world of aristocratic mishaps and comedy in the distant era before the Second World War and the demise of the rigid British class system. The plots of the tales are easy to forget but the pure pleasure of reading such escapist fare is pure joy in our challenging age. Bertie and Jeeves will live and entertain forever!

Beautiful book. But not very many works of this genius included. Here’s a list, since there isn’t one in the descriptionThe Code of the WoostersJeeves Takes ChargeJeeves and the Impending DoomThe Love that PurifiesJeeves and the Yule-Tide SpiritThe Great Sermon HandicapUncle Fred Flits ByThe Crime Wave at BlandingsThe Amazing Hat MysteryHoneysuckle CottageUkridge Rounds a Nasty CornerA Bit of Luck for MabelThe Editor RegretsThe Heart of a GoofThe NodderUncle Fred in the Springtime(from) Over Seventy

This anthology does indeed contain some of P. G. Wodehouse's better pieces, and I recommend it. But for those readers who are just discovering Wodehouse, I'd also like to recommend a few other short and long stories that never fail to make me laugh so hard I cry:In this "Best of Wodehouse" anthology, I highly recommend "The Crime Wave at Blandings."In the book "Blandings Castle," try these stories: "The Custody of the Pumpkin," "Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best," and "Pig Hoooey".Also try the book "Full Moon" (another Blandings Castle story)And, last but not least, what I consider the funniest Jeeves story of all: in the book "Carry On, Jeeves," the story "The Artistic Career of Corky."No matter what Wodehouse book you read, though, you can't go too far wrong. He truly was one of the funniest writers to have ever lived!

Wodehouse was a master of the English humor style, along with Jerome K. Jerome before him. If you like well-crafted sentences and lighthearted, fun stories, written with the sole purpose to entertain, this is your book.As an example of the type of writing I am talking about, here's a scene that has stayed in my mind long after reading:Rain is pouring down on a turn-of-the-20th century English country estate and two men (one was Wooster) on a mission of intrigue to help their friend, get trapped in a gazebo on a lake island guarded by an attack goose. Jeeves, the trusty butler of Wooster, has to rescue them.If this sounds like fun reading to you (trusty butler Jeeves to the rescue), this book is chock full of stories that won't disappoint.Enjoy!

I needed this for a course I'm teaching in a lifelong-learning program. I was looking for a collection that would cover a wide range of Wodehouse's work. There's a fair representation of the Jeeves stories, two Blandings stories, several Ukridge stories, one golf story, several Drones Club stories, and some of Wodehouse's autobiographical writings. I would have liked more Blandings, and the most glaring omission is that there are no Psmith stories. If you just want a single volume of Wodehouse's work over a wide range of his well-known characters, this is a pretty good one.

I have not thoroughly read the collection again, but the binding and overall edition looks great. Integral bookmark was a nice surprise and the font size, layout and paper are good. I was reminded of my delight with PG Wodehouse as a young adult when listening to a podcast interview with Stephen Fry where he mentioned how he connected with Hugh Laurie was his love of PG Wodehouse. I realized my daughter would also benefit from the wit and cleverness.

There really is no other author that writes such hilarious and yet elevated prose. The style and tone is extremely British and presents a romantic view of the landed and idle rich in England in the early 20th century. I find that reading the Jeeves stories at night is dangerous because I will stay up far too late, unable to put down the book. This volume contains more than just Jeeves stories and is a really good place to start if you're new to Wodehouse, and is a very nicely constructed book if you want to have his work in sturdy format to keep.I can't recommend this book highly enough!

Beautiful edition of "The Best of Wodehouse" - Recipient loves it. Thank you.

As new. Delighted. Thank you so much.

Well, sir, I am not such an ass as to dare to rate Wodehouse or his work. I am an admirer of the writer and the man behind him, and I like most things he wrote. He created his own world, even when the real world around him crumbled with the War. Like Shakespeare and Dickens, he created many immortal characters. And like them, he made us laugh. This is not a small blessing in this hard and weary world.This rating and these words are only about this Everyman's Library edition. It is just lovely, and so beautiful. Everything about it is just fine.It contains two novels in full, (The Code of the Woosters, and Uncle Fred in the Springtime ).It has more than a dozen short stories and extracts from his autobiography..But can it be called 'the best' of Wodehouse? Well, why not? The two novels were written at the height of his creative genius, the short stories have almost all of his famous characters and the autobiographical selections reveal the writer and his methods. So in a sense, this is representative of the complete writer. Of course one is bound to have one's own favourites and preferences.This volume has a concise introduction by John Mortimer, well-known novelist and playwright that tells us much about the writer and his art. This is beautifully printed and bound, meant to last. It will be a treasure in one's personal collection. It makes us yearn for more!And thanks Amazon- they offered it at such incredible price! I am so happy with this product.

If you love well written English literature and humour to boot: this is a collector's item. Starting from John Mortimer's introduction ("we don't take humour seriously") to the satire and double entendre of Plum himself, this is an anthology of superbly crafted humour. The language is smart, delightful, precisely engineered, and leaves one chuckling as the phrases are re-kindled in the mind. True, one can get rather tired of the English peerage but then that's what happens with heedless inter-breeding. If you are keen on delivering precise well-crafted English, start with PG Wodehouse: my other favourites are William Safire, Arthur Conan Doyle, Dickens, the Bard and of course, Oscar Wilde.

Excellent collection, good quality paper, binding and sleeve are excellent. Typography is superb. This is the best single volume of Sir Pelham Grenville currently available. Available at a bargain price, go for it! The foreword written by John Mortimer is hilarious; but then, that's quite befitting the tone of the book.P.S. Mine arrived with an RFID tag, heaven knows what for.

I am starting to grow fond of these Everyman books.For the price, you get a very nicely bound books with decent paper quality and hardcover experience.This book is no exception.I wansnt happy with the stories selection.