In addition to his immense published output, P.G. Wodehouse always found time to write letters, and this volume, edited and introduced by the author of his authorised biography, Frances Donaldson, is his last great work. Selected from a vast collection, hugely funny and delightfully readable, they are full of the richest Wodehousian expressions and show a new perspective on Plum's shy, reclusive, innocent yet uniquely gifted personality. If ever letters were a joy to read, these are. Every aspect of Wodehouse's career is covered, including his experiences during the war over the Berlin Broadcasts and his subsequent dealings with Cassandra, who so unfairly attacked him. Included are fascinating letters to his friends Bill Townend, Guy Bolton and Dennis Mackail, about his working and domestic life and his attitudes to other writers; but at the centre, and most revealing of his real nature are his remarkable letters to his stepdaughter Leonora, which have an incomparable biographical value because they were addressed to someone he loved and trusted completely. As Frances Donaldson writes, these letters 'were written by a master of English prose. Full of charm, humour and eccentricities, they are clearly a valuable addition to the published work.'
Author
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of prewar English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career. An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by more recent writers such as Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie and Terry Pratchett. Sean O'Casey famously called him "English literature's performing flea", a description that Wodehouse used as the title of a collection of his letters to a friend, Bill Townend. Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a talented playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of fifteen plays and of 250 lyrics for some thirty musical comedies. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934) and frequently collaborated with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He wrote the lyrics for the hit song Bill in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote the lyrics for the Gershwin/Romberg musical Rosalie (1928), and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928).
