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

Wodehouse, P.G.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0091796342 ISBN 13: 9780091796341

Publisher: Hutchinson, 2011

Synopsis

This is the definitive edition of P.G. Wodehouse's letters, edited with a commentary by Oxford academic Sophie Ratcliffe.

One of the funniest and most admired writers of the twentieth century, P. G. Wodehouse always shied away from the idea of a biography. A quiet, retiring man, he expressed himself through the written word. His letters - collected and expertly edited here - provide an illuminating biographical accompaniment to legendary comic creations such as Jeeves, Bertie Wooster, Psmith and the Empress of Blandings.

Drawing on hitherto unpublished sources, these letters give an unrivalled insight into Wodehouse, covering his schooldays at Dulwich College, the family's financial reverses which saw his hopes of university dashed, life in New York working in musical comedy with Jerome Kern and George and Ira Gershwin, the years of fame as a novelist, and the unhappy episode in 1940 where he was interned by the Germans and later erroneously accused of broadcasting pro-Nazi propaganda.

It is a book every lover of Wodehouse will want to possess.

About this title

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)

Book Description:

The collected letters of England's best-loved comic writer

About this edition

• Publisher: Hutchinson
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0091796342
• ISBN 13: 9780091796341
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 624
• Editor: Ratcliffe Sophie