Wodehouse: A Life

To Evelyn Waugh he was simply "the Master." He wrote ninety novels and story collections, and among his immortal characters are Jeeves, Psmith, and the Empress of Blandings (who is, of course, a pig). Equally impressive is the range of his devotees: Dorothy Parker, John Updike, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Salman Rushdie, John le Carre, and Seamus Heaney. Wodehouse had an extraordinary Broadway career, working with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, and even dared to rewrite Cole Porter's Anything Goes for the London stage. Robert McCrum's magisterial biography chronicles the achievements and shadows of a gilded life. The ill-judged broadcasts from Berlin, where Wodehouse was interned during World War II, produced a violent backlash in England and tarred him, unfairly, as a Nazi sympathizer. His long love affair with America was compromised by endless acrimony with the IRS. This is the book all Wodehouse fans have been waiting for; it eclipses all previous accounts of his life. An Economist Best Book of 2004.

Author: Robert McCrum
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 11/01/2005
Pages: 576
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 1.09lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.58w x 1.41d
ISBN13: 9780393327519
ISBN10: 0393327515
BISAC Categories:
- Biography & Autobiography | Literary Figures
- Literary Criticism | English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh