About the author
SIR PELHAM GRENVILLE WODEHOUSE was born on October 16, 1881, the third son of British magistrate Henry Ernest Wodehouse and his wife Eleanor. Young Wodehouse was no...
About the author
SIR PELHAM GRENVILLE WODEHOUSE was born on October 16, 1881, the third son of British magistrate Henry Ernest Wodehouse and his wife Eleanor. Young Wodehouse was not fond of his given names – ‘Pelham’ and ‘Grenville’ – and shortened them to ‘P.G.’ in his written works.
Educated and Dulwich College, Wodehouse began a career as a banker – a career he actively loathed – before turning to writing. His earliest stories were based on his life as a student (including his first novel, ‘The Pothunters, ‘ published in 1902) and were often serialized to great success, but it wasn’t until he turned full-time to comic fiction that his career took off.
Wodehouse was a prolific and tireless writer, churning out short stories, plays and novels at an astonishing rate for his entire life, in a career that lasted a breathtaking seventy-five years.
His stable of literary characters included the sly, smooth Psmith, the charming and affable ‘Uncle Fred’ Ickenham, Lord Emsworth, Pongo Twistleton and the rest of the habitués of Blandings Castle (the plots often involving very large pigs), Madeleine Bassett, Bingo Little, Catsmeat Potter-Purbright and many, others, none more beloved than the foppish Bertie Wooster and his brainy, unflappable manservant Jeeves.
In addition to his literary fiction, Wodehouse also wrote plays and musicals, for which he provided both dialogue and lyrics, working with such Broadway luminaries as Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern.
In the 30’s, Wodehouse fled England for France to avoid British taxes and was taken prisoner by Germany in 1940. Released after a one-year’s imprisonment, Wodehouse was forced to remain in Germany and was persuaded by his captors to make radio broadcasts – innocuous and comical, he believed – for the German government. These broadcasts were widely viewed in England as traitorous and after the war had ended, Wodehouse never returned to his native land.
Wodehouse and his wife lived in New York taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955. He died in 1975, at the age of 93, in Southampton, New York, leaving behind an astonishing ninety books, forty plays and over two hundred short stories.
