Everyman The Man with Two Left Feet Вудхаус Пелам Гренвилл

П.Г. Вудхаус был, по общему мнению, самым блестящим автором английской комедии двадцатого века, одинаково прославленным по обе стороны Атлантики. Он добился необычного отличия, сочетая максимально широкую популярность с высочайшими литературными стандартами, завоевав как преданность читателей, так и уважение своих коллег - от Хилэра Беллока до Грэма Грина • Эта антология включает в себя два романа, четырнадцать рассказов и выдержки из автобиографии Вудхауса. "Кодекс Вустеров" был написан в 1938 году, "Дядя Фред" - весной 1939 года, когда Вудхаус был на пике своего могущества. В рассказах представлены все самые известные творения Вудхауса – Дживс и Вустер, Укридж, Бинго Литтл, мистер Муллинер, графы Эмсуорт и Икенхэм. Наконец, выдержки из "Более чем семидесяти", мемуаров, столь же забавных и прекрасно написанных, как и романы, дают представление об отношениях и рабочих привычках очень замкнутого человека

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

Фредерик, граф Икенхэм, не тот человек, который убегает от романтических проблем других людей, даже когда сталкивается с запутанными отношениями своего крестника Джонни, подруги Джонни Белинды, дворецкого Альберта Писмарча и возлюбленной Писмарча Фиби, которая случайно оказывается сестрой его работодателя, вспыльчивый сэр Рэймонд "Бифи" Бастэйбл. Сэр Рэймонд сам преследует Барбару Кроу. Все зависит от судьбы сценария к фильму под названием "Время коктейлей" племянника Бастэйбла, Космо Уиздома, но просто для того, чтобы еще немного размешать смесь, Вудхаус добавляет американского мошенника Оли Карлайла. Теперь читайте дальше • Книга на английском языке • Frederick, Earl of Ickenham, is not the man to run away from other people's romantic problems, not even when faced with the tangled relationships of his godson, Johnny, Johnny's girlfriend, Belinda, butler Albert Peasemarch and Peasemarch's beloved, Phoebe, who happens to be the sister of his employer, bad-tempered Sir Raymond 'Beefy' Bastable

A stalwart of the Angler's Rest, where he is usually to be found in company with Miss Postlethwaite the barmaid, Mr Mulliner has an endless supply of brothers, nephews and cousins who feature in the tales with which he entertains the regulars in his favourite pub. There is George, the stammerer, who finds the courage to propose only after being chased by a mob; Wilfred, the chemist, who muddles his cosmetic potions with dire results; Lancelot, the film star; William, the lover of Myrtle Banks; Clarence, the society photographer; and Augustine, the curate, who saves his bishop from disgrace at the school reunion. All win through to love and success, but only after enough farcical mishaps to supply a dozen ordinary comic novelists

More stories about the incredible Mulliner clan, following on from Meet Mr Mulliner. This volume includes such classic Wodehouse tales as ‘The Man Who Gave Up Smoking’, ‘The Awful Gladness of the Mater’, ‘Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court’ and ‘The Passing of Ambrose’

The Little Nugget is one of the novels in which Wodehouse found his feet, a comic thriller set in an English prep school for the children of the nobility and gentry. Into their midst comes eleven-year-old Ogden Ford, the mouthy, overweight, chain-smoking son of an American millionaire. Ogden (whom we meet again in Piccadilly Jim) is the object of a kidnap attempt which forms the basis of the plot. The comedy arises from Wodehouse’s favourite topics of Anglo-American misunderstanding and the absurdities of school life

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

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

The trouble which begins with Gussie Fink-Nottle wandering the streets of London dressed as Mephistopheles reaches its awful climax in his drunken speech to the boys of Market Snodsbury Grammar School. For Bertie Wooster's old friend has fallen in love with Madeline Bassett and, as usual, makes a hash of the affair until Jeeves comes to the rescue. In the meantime, Jeeves must also solve the mystery of the white mess jacket, while sorting out the lives of Bertie's cousin Angela, her mother, and her mother's French chef. In short, a normal working day for that prince among gentlemen's gentlemen in what must be a candidate for the name of the funniest novel in the English language

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 twenty-five stories in this collection reflect Wodehouse’s own happy schooldays at Dulwich College but they also do a good deal more. Although among his earliest attempts at fiction, they reveal an early-maturing comic talent with flashes of brilliance which foreshadow the later adventures of Ukridge, Bingo Little and Bertie Wooster. And by the way, they give fascinating glimpses of a time when motor cars were novelties, schoolmasters wore mortar boards and gowns, and America was a rising power in the world • The best of them display the author’s love of games and knack for neat plotting. In one, a resourceful teenaged heroine helps a truant schoolboy cricketer by marooning his credulous schoolmaster at the top of a church tower until the match is over

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