Where to Start with P.G. Wodehouse: A Reading Guide
Where to start with P.G. Wodehouse — whether to begin with Right Ho, Jeeves, The Code of the Woosters, or something else. A complete reading guide.
P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) is the supreme practitioner of English comic prose — a writer whose Jeeves and Wooster novels and stories have made more readers laugh more consistently than almost any other fiction in the language. His world is a fantasy of 1920s upper-class England — country houses, London clubs, engagements broken and reformed, aunts of terrifying will and eccentric conviction — rendered in a prose style of extraordinary musical precision that combines elaborate metaphor with perfect timing. Evelyn Waugh called him ‘the greatest living writer of English prose’; Hilaire Belloc called him ‘the best writer of English now alive.’ The extravagance of these claims makes sense to anyone who has read him.
Where to Start: Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)
The essential Wodehouse — and the fullest and most perfectly sustained of the Jeeves novels. Bertie Wooster, confident that he understands the romantic situation of his friends Gussie Fink-Nottle (who loves Madeleine Bassett but cannot speak to her) and Tuppy Glossop (whose engagement to Angela has collapsed), takes matters into his own hands — demoting Jeeves to a purely sartorial role. The results are, predictably, disastrous; the chaos escalates through a succession of misunderstandings, interventions that make everything worse, and a speech at a boys’ prize-giving that Gussie delivers while deeply drunk. Jeeves, when finally permitted to act, resolves everything with characteristic invisible skill.
The pleasure is the prose — Wodehouse’s similes (‘the sort of look that would have made a man climb trees at the zoo’) are its own separate genre — and the plot complications, which Wodehouse sustains at length without losing either clarity or momentum.
The Code of the Woosters (1938)
Many readers’ favourite Jeeves novel — the one in which Bertie must simultaneously avoid engagement to Madeline Bassett, retrieve a silver cow-creamer from a dangerous collector, and deal with Roderick Spode, the leader of a Fascist organization called the Black Shorts. The novel is Wodehouse’s most explicitly political — Spode is a clear parody of Oswald Mosley and the British Union of Fascists, rendered as pure absurdity — and the revelation of what Jeeves holds over Spode to neutralize him is one of the great comic reveals in the series.
Funnier, darker in its targets, and more tightly plotted than Right Ho, Jeeves — most readers would start with either and then read the other immediately.
Reading P.G. Wodehouse
Wodehouse’s genius is for the perfectly constructed comic situation and the perfectly crafted comic sentence — for the moment when the plot complication reaches its maximum impossibility and the prose is equal to the job of rendering it. His world is entirely escapist, his characters have no psychological depth (they are not meant to), and his comedy is the purest in English. Begin with either Right Ho, Jeeves or The Code of the Woosters — both are immediately accessible, immediately funny, and entirely self-contained. Once you’ve read them, you will want to read everything else.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with P.G. Wodehouse?
Right Ho, Jeeves (1934) is the best starting point for most readers — a longer Jeeves novel (rather than one of the short-story collections) in which Bertie Wooster attempts to solve the romantic entanglements of his friends Gussie Fink-Nottle and Tuppy Glossop with spectacular ineptitude, and Jeeves — temporarily sidelined — allows events to reach their maximum chaos before intervening. It is Wodehouse in full flight: the prose at its most musical, the plot complications at their most deliriously sustained, and the comic machinery at its most perfectly tuned. The Code of the Woosters is the best alternative and many readers' favourite.
What is the Jeeves and Wooster series about?
The Jeeves and Wooster series follows Bertie Wooster — a wealthy, good-natured, hopelessly incompetent young English gentleman of the 1920s — and his gentleman's personal gentleman (valet) Reginald Jeeves, who is omniscient, imperturbable, and quietly contemptuous of the sartorial choices Bertie makes when left to himself. Each novel or story involves Bertie becoming entangled in a romantic or social crisis — usually involving his aunts, his friends' engagements, and some external menace — which Jeeves resolves through a combination of psychological insight, inspired improvisation, and the discreet exploitation of everyone's weaknesses. The pleasure is the repetition of a perfect formula, infinitely varied.
How many Jeeves books are there and what order should I read them?
Wodehouse wrote eleven Jeeves novels and several short-story collections across his career. The short stories (in collections including The Inimitable Jeeves, Carry On, Jeeves, and Very Good, Jeeves) were written before the longer novels and establish the characters; the novels (starting with Thank You, Jeeves in 1934 and continuing through Right Ho, Jeeves, The Code of the Woosters, and others) give the formula more room to develop its comic machinery. The books can be read in any order — there is no overarching plot — but starting with Right Ho, Jeeves or The Code of the Woosters puts you immediately in the middle of Wodehouse at his best.
Is P.G. Wodehouse still funny?
Wodehouse is perhaps the purest comic prose stylist in the English language, and his comedy has aged remarkably well — largely because it depends on language and situation rather than topical references. His world (1920s upper-class England, aunts and ancestral silver and village fêtes) is so completely removed from contemporary reality that it functions as pure fantasy rather than satire, and the pleasure is the prose itself: the perfectly constructed simile, the exactly calibrated anticlimax, the momentum of the plot complications. He is consistently cited by writers of all kinds as a master of comic English prose.
