Everyman The Clicking of Cuthbert Вудхаус Пелам Гренвилл

The Oldest Member knows everything that has ever happened on the golf course - and a great deal more besides • Take the story of Cuthbert, for instance. He's helplessly in love with Adeline, but what use are his holes-in-one when she's in thrall to Culture and prefers rising young writers to winners of the French Open? But enter a Great Russian Novelist with a strange passion, and Cuthbert's prospects are transformed. Then look at what happens to young Mitchell Holmes, who misses short putts because of the uproar of the butterflies in the adjoining meadows. His career seems on the skids - but can golf redeem it? • The kindly but shrewd gaze of the Oldest Member picks out some of the funniest stories Wodehouse ever wrote

The nearest Wodehouse ever came to a serious story, The Coming of Bill is a fascinating blend of social comment and light comedy. It concerns the offspring of Ruth, a spoilt heiress, and Kirk, an impecunious artist of perfect physique, brought together by Ruth’s aunt, a believer in eugenics. The young couple are eventually successful in retrieving their child and their marriage from the influence of the overbearing Mrs Porter, but only after a series of comic mishaps in a book which features a galaxy of vintage Wodehouse characters, including the bossy aunt, a tetchy millionaire, a good-natured ex-boxer and an orotund English butler

The Adventures of Sally is a transatlantic comedy set in worlds Wodehouse knew well: American theatres, English country houses, and the theatrical boarding-houses where young men and women dream of finding fame and fortune. Coming into a modest inheritance, one of these young women, Sally, is able to leave her boarding-house at last, and looks forward to a quiet life in a small apartment. Instead, she finds herself swept up in a series of adventures with her ambitious brother and her playwright fiance, along with an accident-prone, dog-loving Englishman she meets on a French beach and his supercilious cousin, who pursue her across the Atlantic. While losing most of her inheritance backing a play, she sheds the unsatisfactory fiance, rejects the supercilious cousin, falls in love with the accident-prone Englishman, and finds happiness in a kennel on Long Island

A classic musical comedy plot turned into a novel, The Prince and Betty is the story of a man who gives up everything for his girl. Fortunately, she chances to be the stepdaughter of a millionaire • John Maude and Betty Silver are in love, but when John turns out to be heir to the principality of Mervo, a small Mediterranean island not a thousand miles from Monte Carlo, he finds himself ensnared in the establishment of a new casino, much to his beloved's high-minded disgust. She leaves him and takes a job with an American family in London; he abandons his post to follow her • Eventually their misunderstandings are disentangled, and in the process of telling their story, published early in his career, Wodehouse constructs the critique of Europe versus America, privilege versus enterprise, decadence versus adventure, which was to underpin many of his later tales

This charming novel is one of Wodehouse’s best late works. The vintage plot concerns a Gainsborough miniature, a mouldering country house, an overweight solicitor, a fortune-hunter, a butler who isn’t a butler, an American corporate lawyer and his kleptomaniac sister; but the heart of the story – in every sense –concerns Jerry West and his determined pursuit of air hostess Jane Hunnicutt. When Jane unexpectedly becomes a millionairess, Jerry despairs of wooing her, but the sun never goes behind a cloud for long in Wodehouse: Jerry gets his Jane in the end, but only after a series of trials which raise the comic stakes to the author’s highest level

In this comic novel - dedicated to Douglas Fairbanks, who starred in the stage version - Jimmy Pitt, man-about-town and former newspaper hound, takes a bet that he cannot commit burglary. He finds breaking and entering easy enough, but then discovers that he has forced his way into the home of a tough New York policeman. Naturally, Captain McEachern has a beautiful daughter and problems of his own. The complications which ensue from their meeting, involving a rich cast of Wodehousean characters from both sides of the Atlantic, create one of his most amusing and light-hearted early novels

"Что за чертовщина! Лучшее из Вудхауса" - это коллекция самых прекрасных и смешных историй от самого прекрасного и смешного писателя, которого когда-либо знало прошлое столетие • Мы все знаем Дживса и Вустера, но какая история Дживса самая лучшая? Эта великолепная антология рассказов, отрывков из романов, рабочих набросков, статей, писем и стихотворений дает новый взгляд на величайшего юмориста двадцатого века • Книга на английском языке • A collection of the finest and funniest words from the finest funniest writer the past century ever knew. Published for the millennium and to mark the 25th anniversary of his death, this is the first major selection of the whole of P.G. Wodehouse's work to have been published for a generation, and it includes a generous selection of previously unpublished work

If you come into a lot of money, life becomes easier, right? No, wrong - at least not for Sally Nicholas, whose generosity of spirit leaves her wide open to all the slings and arrows outrageous fortune can send. Her handsome fiance turns out not to be all he seems - and then there is the show he's written, which Sally puts on in the theatre. No, life is not straightforward at all. But waiting in the wings is Ginger Kemp, who really does adore her, seems to make a hash of everything he tries and yet is always ready to try something else. If money becomes a problem, perhaps Ginger can provide a solution

Пелэм Вудхаус: Мир Дживса • Сборник замечательных рассказов о Дживсе и Вустере, специально отобранных и представленных самим Вудхаусом, который был поражен размером своей подборки и описал ее как почти идеальное пресс-папье. Как он писал • "Теперь, когда я так много написал о нем, мне кажется любопытным вспомнить, как мягко и недраматично Дживс впервые вошел в мой маленький мирок. Что характерно, он не стал выпячиваться вперед. В тот раз он произнес всего две строчки • Первым был • - К вам миссис Грегсон, сэр • Второй • - Очень хорошо, сэр, какой костюм вы наденете? • Только некоторое время спустя до меня дошли качества этого человека. Я до сих пор краснею при мысли о том, как бесцеремонно я обошелся с ним при нашей первой встрече..." • В этот сборник вошли "Продолжай, Дживс", "Неподражаемый Дживс", "Очень хорошо, Дживс" и рассказы "Дживс готовит омлет" и "Дживс и жирная птица"

The uncle of the title is a mysterious stranger who arrives at Beckford College and turns out to be younger than his nephew, already a prefect at the school. Thus the scene is set for comic confusion and misunderstanding. But the plot is the least interesting part of this charming early book which turns more impressively on a series of sporting events which Wodehouse describes with the perception and panache of an afficionado. An amusing variation on the traditional school story in which the youthful uncle foreshadows both Psmith and Ukridge

The Earl of Marshmoreton's lively daughter – the damsel of the title – thinks she is in love with one Geoffrey Raymond, but a cheerful American song-writer called George Bevan knows better. After one meeting with her, when she climbs into his passing cab to escape from her pompous brother in London, George is dazzled. He pursues her to the family seat in Hampshire and does battle for her hand with her brother, their snobbish aunt and a father who will do anything for a quiet life. Love triumphs in the end with the unwitting help of a sporting butler, and a page boy with golden curls and no conscience, making this one of Wodehouse's most charming early comedies

With the Duke of Dunstable trying to steal his pig to sell to Lord Tilbury, mischievous Church Lads camping in his park, his sister Constance bossing him unmercifully, and Lavender Briggs, his secretary, making life miserable, Lord Emsworth has little time to concentrate on the invasion of Blandings Castle by yet another imposter. But Bill Bailey, aka Cuthbert Meriwether, has inveigled himself into the castle to be with his beloved, Myra Schoonmaker, who is staying there under the eagle eye of Lady Constance, and Lady Constance is determined to thwart him. In the end virtue conquers vice: the lovers are united, Dunstable defeated and Tilbury trounced, but only through the brilliant plotting of Frederick, Earl of Ickenham. Everyone is happy who deserves to be, none more so than Lord Emsworth who at one fell swoop is freed from the tyranny of a duke, a secretary and a sister