A Books by P G Wodehouse
Introduction
Section A a
Section A a provides an authoritative list of the books written by P G Wodehouse. There is no agreement amongst commentators or aficionados as to how many he wrote, for the reasons explained below, and The P G Wodehouse Society (UK) does not express a view on this matter.
Reasons why there can be many legitimate views as to the number of his books, some of which are referred to in general terms in the introduction to this website feature, include:
1 Several books, particularly collections of short stories, which were published in the United States differed from the nearest equivalent collection in the United Kingdom.
2 Some books have joint authorship with another person.
3 When referring to his output of fiction, it is necessary to exclude autobiographical and similar work, and collections of essays.
4 A decision has to be made on whether to include collections of stories first published in book form after Wodehouse’s death.
5 A decision has to be made on whether to include the unfinished novel Sunset at Blandings.
6 A decision has to be made on whether to include individual short stories published in book form for individual or promotional reasons.
7 Different approaches can be taken to the problems caused by the books making up Mike, The Prince and Betty and Psmith, Journalist.
8 The recent discovery of a serialised novelette based on The Prince and Betty, and a novelette version of A Gentleman of Leisure.
To enable those interested to make their own informed decisions, the lists that follow divide P G Wodehouse’s books into titles of different descriptions, give the equivalent American title in brackets where different, and identify whether the UK or the US edition was published first.
The code followed in all the lists in this Sheet is:
Bold type where the UK printing came first.
Italic type indicates simultaneous publication.
Ordinary type where the US printing came first.
Section A b
Section A b relates to pages IS 9, IS 9a and IS 9b from the previous Information Sheets, and the three papers together provide a Chronology of Wodehouse’s Fiction, in as simple a form as we have been able to find. It covers three elements:
An introduction;
A Simplified Chronology of his Fiction;
Copies of articles from Wooster Sauce providing further details on six aspects of the Chronology.
This section provides information which can help readers decide in which order they should read books in a particular series - which can be particularly tricky when the relevant characters appear in a number of short stories and novels written over a considerable period of time. It is one of the most frequent questions that we are asked.
Section A c
The Everyman Wodehouse series of 99 titles was published between 2000 and 2015, and details can be found at Section A c, along with their years of publication. The vast majority of the titles are designed to be simple reprints of the text of regular first editions, but attention is drawn to the contents of the following titles:
1 The titles Mike at Wrykyn (2011) and Mike and Psmith (2012) together constitute the original book Mike, published in 1909.
2 Kid Brady Stories/Man of Means (2013) combined seven stories about Kid Brady which appeared in the American Pearson’s Magazine between September 1905 and March 1907 with the six stories in the series A Man of Means which first appeared in Strand Magazine between April and September 1914.
3 The Swoop/The Military Invasion of America (2013) included the texts of both the original publication of The Swoop (1909) and of The Military Invasion of America, a rewritten version of the story which appeared in the American magazine Vanity Fair, in July and August 1915.
4 Tales of Wrykyn and Elsewhere (2014) republished the book of the same name published by Porpoise Books in 1997.
5 The Luck Stone (2014) reproduced the nineteen episodes of a story which appeared in Chums between 16 September, 1908, and 20 January, 1909, which had first been published in book form by Galahad Books in 1997.