I read the Baroness' books in 1964, as a 14-year old (and kept a list of all the words I didn't know, which I looked up in dictionary periodically, then memorized them on my one mile-walk to and from school every day). Went on to read all of the Graustark books. My daughters all read the Orczy books with similar delight.
I'd like to put in a word for the far less productive ( five novels ) American comic novelist, Charles Portis. Portis is best known for "True Grit," but the critic, Ron Rosenbaum, was well within his rights to assert that Portis was "America's great, unknown novelist." If you can read "Norwood" or "The Dog of the South" without screaming with laughter, I must regard you as another branch of the human race.
Wodehouse fascinates me for a lot of reasons, one being that as one Broadway historian commented, if Wodehouse had died in 1920, he would be remembered as Broadway's first great lyricist.
I can't remember if he wrote with anyone other than Jerome Kern, but in the teens of the last century, Kern and Wodehouse and often Guy Bolton owned the American musical. It's hard to find these songs. The one Kern/Wodehouse musical which I know was recorded was the 1959 revival of "Leave it to Jane," but if you do a little searching, you should be able to find collections, such as the one which Sylvia McNair recorded about twenty - five years ago, "The Land Where The Good Songs Go." If you can listen to "Go, Little Boat," without being moved, I could never understand you.
Sorry, mixed up Jeeves and Wooster in one line, edited to fix it.
(By the way, notice how chivalrously I avoided dwelling on Merle Oberon’s charms, it being my wedding anniversary month and all. Ask me next month…)
“They seek him here, they seek him there.
Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.
Is he in heaven or in hell,
That damned elusive Pimpernel.”
I read the Baroness' books in 1964, as a 14-year old (and kept a list of all the words I didn't know, which I looked up in dictionary periodically, then memorized them on my one mile-walk to and from school every day). Went on to read all of the Graustark books. My daughters all read the Orczy books with similar delight.
> PG Wodehouse, the funniest writer to ever live
Amen to that!
I'd like to put in a word for the far less productive ( five novels ) American comic novelist, Charles Portis. Portis is best known for "True Grit," but the critic, Ron Rosenbaum, was well within his rights to assert that Portis was "America's great, unknown novelist." If you can read "Norwood" or "The Dog of the South" without screaming with laughter, I must regard you as another branch of the human race.
Wodehouse fascinates me for a lot of reasons, one being that as one Broadway historian commented, if Wodehouse had died in 1920, he would be remembered as Broadway's first great lyricist.
I can't remember if he wrote with anyone other than Jerome Kern, but in the teens of the last century, Kern and Wodehouse and often Guy Bolton owned the American musical. It's hard to find these songs. The one Kern/Wodehouse musical which I know was recorded was the 1959 revival of "Leave it to Jane," but if you do a little searching, you should be able to find collections, such as the one which Sylvia McNair recorded about twenty - five years ago, "The Land Where The Good Songs Go." If you can listen to "Go, Little Boat," without being moved, I could never understand you.
I like True Grit a lot, will have to read the others - thank you!!