“I'm sorry, Bertie, I didn't hear. What were you talking drivel about?”
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P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was an English writer and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. His creations include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and Mr. Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous…
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culture · English writer (1881–1975) · writer · novelist · playwright · librettist · lyricist · humorist · screenwriter · songwriter · short story writer · also P. G. Wodehouse, Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, P.G. Wodehouse, Wodehouse
Born 15 October 1881 · Died 14 February 1975 · Q207515
80 published statements · 0 followers
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2026· 27 entries
“The fellow with a face rather like a walnut.”
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“You think, on the whole, not drown myself?”
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“One does if one doesn't want one's ruddy head pulled off.”
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“My dear Tuppy, does one bandy a woman's name?”
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“My scheme is far more subtle. Let me outline it for you.”
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“And, anyway, no matter how much you may behave like the deaf adder of Scripture which, as you are doubtless aware, the more one piped, the less it danced, or words to that effect, I shall carry on as planned.”
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“Say it once again, and I'll biff you where you stand. I've enough to endure without being tutted at.”
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“Any tutting that's required, I'll attend to myself. And the same applies to clicking the tongue, if you were thinking of doing that.”
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“I never said he had. I said he was the father of the boy — or, rather, of the man.”
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“I suppose it's her profile that does it. She has a lovely profile.”
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“Tuppy, old man, the Bassett's going to marry Gussie Fink-Nottle.”
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“Don't be an ass. I'm engaged to Miss Bassett.”
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“I said the boy was the father of the man.”
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“I thought you said something about somebody's father.”
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“Beginning with a critique of my own limbs, which she said, justly enough, were nothing to write home about, this girl went on to dissect my manners, morals, intellect, general physique, and method of eating asparagus with such acerbity that by the time she had finished the best you could say of Bertram was that, so far as was known, he had never actually committed murder or set fire to an orphan asylum.”
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“Very well, Jeeves. I accept your ruling. After all, it would be unpleasant for Mrs. Travers to find a swollen body floating in her pond.”
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“Is it likely that I would come out here in order to talk drivel?”
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“But why do you want me? I mean, what am I? Ask yourself that.”
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“Work, the what's-its-name of the thingummy and the thing-um-a-bob of the what d'you-call-it.”
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“...These trousers may sit well, but, if they do, it is because the pockets are empty.”
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“Of course, old man, I only saw the kid once, and then only for a moment, but — but it *was* an ugly sort of kid wasn't it, if I remember rightly?”
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“Have you ever heard of Market Snodsbury Grammar School?”
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“It's a grammar school at Market Snodsbury.”
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“I am not pulling your leg. Nothing would induce me to touch your beastly leg.”
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“I'm hopeless at a game like that. Ask Jeeves about the time I got lugged in to address a girls' school. I made the most colossal ass of myself.”
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“And I confidently anticipate that you will make an equally colossal ass of yourself on the thirty-first of this month. That's why I want you. The way I look at it is that, as the thing is bound to be a frost, anyway,one may as well get a hearty laugh out of it.”
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2025· 2 entries
The Guardian: Wodehouse in Wonderland review – less than spiffing portrait of the artist as a light comedian
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Long Island Press: P.G. Wodehouse: The master of farce
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2024· 2 entries
The Guardian: Roddy Doyle: ‘A PG Wodehouse audiobook made me laugh so much I had to stop the car’
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BroadwayWorld: JEEVES TAKES CHARGE By P. G. Wodehouse Will Receive First Revival
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2023· 1 entry
The Guardian: Bob Mortimer and India Knight among Wodehouse fiction prize shortlistees
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2022· 1 entry
Times of San Diego: Author P.G. Wodehouse Society Plans Convention in San Diego Oct. 20-23
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2020· 1 entry
The Guardian: Graphic novel about warring ice-cream trucks scoops first for Wodehouse prize
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2019· 1 entry
The Guardian: From the archive: PG Wodehouse and the love of dogs
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2015· 1 entry
The Boston Globe: P.G. Wodehouse’s language is as American as it is British
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2013· 2 entries
Washington Times: BOOK REVIEW: ‘P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters’
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The Denver Post: Book review: “P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters” shines light on English novelist’s life
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2012· 1 entry
Publishers Weekly: P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters
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2004· 1 entry
Observes, "Wodehouse is more popular today than on the day he died", and "his comic vision has an absolutely secure place in the English literary imagination"
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1994· 1 entry
Released album “Show Boat”.
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1975· 4 entries
Awarded Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (1975).
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Died 1975-02-14.
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Revealed that "For a humorous novel you've got to have a scenario, and you've got to test it so that you know where the comedy comes in, where the situations come in
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At the age of 93, in Southampton, New York, one month after he was awarded a knighthood of the Order of the British Empire (KBE)
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1974· 1 entry
The British prime minister, Harold Wilson, intervened to secure a knighthood (KBE) for Wodehouse, which was announced in the January 1975 New Year Honours list
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1967· 1 entry
And 1971 were blocked for fear that such an award would "revive the controversy of his wartime behaviour and give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which the embassy was doing its best to eradic
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1965· 1 entry
Although his popularity—and the sales figures—slowly recovered over time
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1957· 2 entries
"If you ask me to tell you frankly if I like the name Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess that I do not
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“If you ask me to tell you frankly if I like the name Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, I must confess that I do not. ... I was named after a godfather, and not a thing to show for it but a small silver mug which I lost in 1897.”
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1955· 3 entries
Wodehouse wrote "Aunt Agatha is definitely my Aunt Mary, who was the scourge of my childhood
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“Aunt Agatha is definitely my Aunt Mary, who was the scourge of my childhood.”
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Wodehouse became an American citizen, though he remained a British subject, and was therefore still eligible for UK state honours
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1953· 1 entry
“Of course I ought to have had the sense to see that it was a loony thing to do to use the German radio for even the most harmless stuff, but I didn”
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1948· 2 entries
To shop and visit family and friends, Wodehouse never left America after his arrival in 1947
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“Well, yes, in a measure, seen from the right, too. But would that account for it? I mean, in these busy days you can't spend your whole time dodging round a girl, trying to see her sideways. I still maintain that this tendency on the part of the populace to get engaged to Florence is inexplicable.”
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1941· 2 entries
The Concise Cambridge History of English Literature opined that Wodehouse had "a gift for highly original aptness of phrase that almost suggests a poet struggling for release among the wild extravagances of farce", while
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That it was damaging to England's dignity that the public or "the academic government of Oxford, dead from the chin up" considered Wodehouse an important figure in English literature
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1935· 1 entry
Wodehouse created the last of his regular cast of principal characters, Lord Ickenham, otherwise known as Uncle Fred, who, in Usborne's words, "leads the dance in four novels and a short story
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1934· 5 entries
Wodehouse moved to France for tax reasons; in 1940 he was taken prisoner at Le Touquet by the invading Germans and interned for nearly a year
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“You will agree with me that he is not everybody's money.”
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Wodehouse collaborated with Bolton on the book for Cole Porter's Anything Goes (Porter wrote his own lyrics), but at the last minute their version was almost entirely rewritten by others at the instigation of the produce
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“There may be something in what you say, sir.”
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“Oh, yes, he thinks a lot of you. I remember his very words. 'Mr Wooster, miss,' he said, 'is, perhaps, mentally somewhat negligible but he has a heart of gold.'”
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1926· 1 entry
“I don't see how it could have been, old chap.”
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1918· 1 entry
“s lyrics won high praise from critics as well as fellow lyricists such as Ira Gershwin. Unlike his original model, Gilbert, Wodehouse preferred the music to be written first, fitting his words into the melodies. Donaldson suggests that this is the reason why his lyrics have largely been overlooked in recent years: they fit the music perfectly, but do not stand on their own in verse form as Gilbert”
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1910· 1 entry
“s monocle, studied suavity, and stateliness of speech, all of which Wodehouse adopted for his new character. Psmith featured in three more novels: Psmith in the City (1910), a burlesque of banking; Psmith, Journalist (1915) set in New York; and Leave It to Psmith (1923), set at Blandings Castle. In May 1909 Wodehouse made his second visit to New York, where he sold two short stories to Cosmopolitan and Collier”
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1909· 2 entries
Wodehouse wrote eight novels and co-wrote another two
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“s work from this period, almost all that deserves to survive is the school fiction. Looking back in the 1950s Wodehouse viewed these as his apprentice years:”
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1908· 1 entry
With the serialisation of The Lost Lambs, published the following year in book form as the second half of the novel Mike
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1904· 1 entry
Anyone in the London writing world who had been to America was regarded with awe and looked upon as an authority on that terra incognita
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1901· 1 entry
With the help of a former Dulwich master, William Beach Thomas, Wodehouse secured an appointment—at first temporary and later permanent—writing for The Globe's popular "By the Way" column
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1895· 1 entry
And his pension was paid in rupees; fluctuation against the pound reduced its value in Britain
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1894· 1 entry
To his great joy, Wodehouse was able to follow his brother Armine to Dulwich College
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1893· 1 entry
Studied at Malvern House Preparatory School (1891–1893).
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1892· 1 entry
After which he was largely brought up by his aunts, including the writer Mary Bathurst Deane,
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1891· 2 entries
Studied at Elizabeth College (1889–1891).
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Wodehouse went on to Malvern House Preparatory School in Kent, which concentrated on preparing its pupils for entry to the Royal Navy
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1886· 1 entry
The brothers were sent to a dame-school in Croydon, where they spent three years
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1881· 1 entry
Born 1881-10-15.
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