P G Wodehouse

These eleven stories describe the misadventures of the delightfully idle "Eggs," "Beans," and "Crumpets" that populate the Drones club: young men wearing spats, starting spats, and landing in sticky spots. For the first of his many appearances in the Wodehouse canon, Uncle Fred comes to what he believes to be the rescue.

Meet the Young Men in Spats - all members of the Drones Club, all crossed in love and all busy betting their sometimes nonexistent fortunes on unlikely outcomes - that's when they're not recovering from driving their sports cars through rather than round Marble Arch. These wonderful comic short stories are the essence of innocent fun.

WHAT THIS STORY IS ABOUTJill had money, Jill was engaged to be married to Sir Derek Underhill. Suddenly Jill becomes penniless, and she is no longer engaged. With a smile, in which there is just a tinge of recklessness, she refuses to be beaten and turns to face the world. Instead she went to New York and became a member of the chorus of The Rose of America, and Mr. Wodehouse is enabled to lift the curtain of the musical comedy world. There is laughter and drama in Jill the Reckless, and the action never flags from the moment that Freddie Rooke confesses that he has had a hectic night, down to the point where Wally says briefly "Let 'em," which is page. . . .

"Please, sir, it's about my salary." His age was twenty-two and his name was Roland Bleke. Mr. Fineberg, at his word, drew himself together much as a British square at Waterloo must have drawn itself together at the sight of a squadron of cuirassiers. "Salary?" he cried. "What about it? What's the matter with it? You get it, don't you?" "Yes, sir, but --" "Well? Don't stand there like an idiot. What is it?" "It's too much." Mr. Fineberg's brain reeled. It was improbable that the millennium could have arrived with a jerk; on the other hand, he had distinctly heard one of his clerks complain that his salary was too large. . . .

"This robbery of the pots is a rum thing," said Vaughan, thoughtfully, when the last shreds of Plunkett's character had been put through the mincing-machine to the satisfaction of all concerned. "Yes. It's the sort of thing one doesn't think possible till it actually happens." "What the dickens made them put the things in the Pav. at all? They must have known it wouldn't be safe." "Well, you see, they usually cart them into the Board Room, I believe, only this time the governors were going to have a meeting there. They couldn't very well meet in a room with the table all covered with silver pots." "Don't see why." "Well, I suppose they could, really, but some of the governors are fairly nuts on strict form. There's that crock who makes the two-hour vote of thanks speeches on Prize Day. You can see him rising to a point of order, and fixing the Old 'Un with a fishy eye." "Well, anyhow, I don't see that they can blame a burglar for taking the pots if they simply chuck them in his way like that." "No. I say, we'd better weigh in with the Livy. The man Ward'll be round directly. Where's the dic? AND our invaluable friend, Mr. Bohn? Right. Now, you reel it off, and I'll keep an eye on the notes." And they settled down to the business of the day.

The Man Upstairs is a collection of short stories, it is a miscellaneous collection, not featuring any of Wodehouse's regular characters; most of the stories concern love and romance. There were three distinct stages in the evolution of Annette Brougham's attitude towards the knocking in the room above. In the beginning it had been merely a vague discomfort. Absorbed in the composition of her waltz, she had heard it almost subconsciously. The second stage set in when it became a physical pain like red-hot pincers wrenching her mind from her music. Finally, with a thrill in indignation, she knew it for what it was -- an insult. The unseen brute disliked her playing, and was intimating his views with a boot-heel. Defiantly, with her foot on the loud pedal, she struck -- almost slapped -- the keys once more. "Bang " from the room above. "Bang Bang "Also includes "Something to Worry About," "Deep Waters," "When Doctors Disagree," "By Advice of Counsel," "Rough-Hew Them How We Will," "The Man Who Disliked Cats," "Ruth in Exile," "Archibald's Benefit," "The Man, the Maid, and the Miasma," "The Good Angel," "Pots o'Money," "Out of School," "Three from Dunsterville," "The Tuppenny Millionaire," "Ahead of Schedule," "Sir Agravaine," "The Goal-Keeper and the Plutocrat," and "In Alcala." Wodehouse worked extensively on his books, sometimes having two or more in preparation simultaneously. He would take up to two years to build a plot and write a scenario of about thirty thousand words. After the scenario was complete he would write the story. Early in his career he would produce a novel in about three months but he slowed in old age to around six months. He used a mixture of Edwardian slang, quotations from and allusions to numerous poets and several literary techniques to produce a prose style that has been compared with comic poetry and musical comedy.

If Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge had a fiver for every dodgy scheme he has ever floated, he would be a rich man indeed. In these ten stories he tries every way of making money, from writing political slogans to opening a college for dogs. In his own eyes, Ukridge is a Great Man and a Visionary. In ours, he is English literature's most delightful chancer and one of Wodehouse's greatest comic creations: charming, ambitious, persuasive, optimistic and almost always disastrous. Sometimes supported by his rich Aunt Julia - but more often expelled from her house for his sins - he moves through the landscape in his eternal yellow mackintosh, dreaming of riches and borrowing shillings, an innocent abroad in a hostile world.

Splendid collection contains first eight stories featuring Bertie Wooster, the deliciously dim aristocrat and Jeeves, his brainy, imperturbable manservant. Also, the complete Reggie Pepper (Bertie''s prototype) series.

This fourth Jeeves volume contains "Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit", "Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves" and "Jeeves in the Offing".