Серия книг «P.G. Wodehouse» — 99 книг — стр. 3

Everyone in Company for Henry wants to escape from something. Hard-up Henry Paradene would like to unload his hideous country house on his millionaire American cousin, J. Wendell Stickney. Wendell wishes he could be rid of his embarrassing aunt Kelly, while Kelly wants to escape her financial dependence on Wendell. Henry’s niece, Jane, needs to part from her glamorous but ghastly fiancé, Lionel, while Bill Hardy, who falls for Jane, needs no convincing to abandon the bachelor state. Jane’s brother Algy, meanwhile, spends his time thinking up dodgy schemes to lift himself out of poverty. Everything ends happily ever after for most of them, but only when they have been put through the hoops of a classic Wodehouse plot.

Everyone in Company for Henry wants to escape from something. Hard-up Henry Paradene would like to unload his hideous country house on his millionaire American cousin, J. Wendell…

Do Butlers Burgle Banks? features the hitherto fortunate owner of Bond’s Bank, who finds himself in a spot of trouble so serious that he wants someone to burgle the bank before the trustees inspect it. Fortunately for him, Horace Appleby, currently posing as his butler, is on hand to oblige. For Horace is, in fact, not a butler at all but the best sort of gangster, prudently concealing himself in an English country house while hiding from his rivals. Looking for peace and safety, Horace is to discover before long that the hot-spots of Chicago are a whole lot more restful than the English countryside. This is the lightest of light comedies, a Wodehousean soufflé from his later years.

Do Butlers Burgle Banks? features the hitherto fortunate owner of Bond’s Bank, who finds himself in a spot of trouble so serious that he wants someone to burgle the bank before…

When Bill Bannister meets Doctor Sally Smith, love blossoms immediately. Unfortunately there is just the small problem of Lottie Higginbotham, former actress, serial bride and human fireball, with whom Bill is already involved. The well-meaning interference of Bill's old friend, 'Squiffy' Tidmouth, once married to Lottie, only complicates matters further, until everything is straightened out in a series of comic encounters at Bill's ancestral home and everyone lives happily ever after.

When Bill Bannister meets Doctor Sally Smith, love blossoms immediately. Unfortunately there is just the small problem of Lottie Higginbotham, former actress, serial bride and…

Bingo Little, husband of romantic novelist Rosie M. Banks, escapes from the watchful eye of his wife with hazardous results. Two men and a policeman vie for paternity of the ugliest baby. Ukridge finds a suit but loses the girl, and Anselm Mulliner preaches the sermon of his life. In this wonderful collection of nine stories, Wodehouse puts old friends through their paces and finds them lively as ever.

Bingo Little, husband of romantic novelist Rosie M. Banks, escapes from the watchful eye of his wife with hazardous results. Two men and a policeman vie for paternity of the…

Three American sisters leave their chicken farm on Long Island for a holiday in Europe. In France they encounter the charming but penniless Marquis de Maufringneuse, his writer son Jeff, and the marquis’s tough American ex-wife. When they all find themselves together at the exclusive resort of St. Rocque - one of the sisters in search of a husband, the marquis in search of a fortune, the writer in search of love - Wodehousean complications ensue.

In French Leave Wodehouse abandons his familiar world of English country houses and London clubs for a more sophisticated European milieu but the comedy is just as light-hearted.

Three American sisters leave their chicken farm on Long Island for a holiday in Europe. In France they encounter the charming but penniless Marquis de Maufringneuse, his writer…

Will playboy Biffy avoid trouble until his thirtieth birthday in a few days’ time and inherit a vast fortune from his teetotal godfather who has stipulated that he must stay sober and out of prison to get it? Not if scheming Lord Tilbury, brother of the said godfather, has anything to do with it. Already rich, Tilbury can always use a few more million – so, knowing Biffy’s weakness for wines and spirits, he and his odious henchman Pilbeam devise a fiendish plot to seduce the true heir from the path of sobriety and involve him in a riot. Find out what happens to the frozen assets in this late Wodehouse farce which revives two of his favourite villains.

Will playboy Biffy avoid trouble until his thirtieth birthday in a few days’ time and inherit a vast fortune from his teetotal godfather who has stipulated that he must stay sober…

J. Wellington Gedge seems to have everything a man could desire: a rich wife, a chateau, a life of ease in the south of France. But all he really wants is to return to California, not least because Mrs Gedge, who holds the purse-strings, is scheming to have him appointed as American ambassador in Paris, which means he will have to wear a sissy uniform. Fortunately, her plans are thwarted by a complicated series of events which involves French aristocrats, American crooks, an English novelist and the appalling Senator Opal, whose daughter, Jane, has a mind of her own.

J. Wellington Gedge seems to have everything a man could desire: a rich wife, a chateau, a life of ease in the south of France. But all he really wants is to return to California,…

Freddie Widgeon wants the money to buy shares in a coffee plantation in Kenya so that he can marry Sally Foster. Soapy and Dolly Molloy want to get their hands on a cache of stolen jewels hidden in the house of Freddie’s neighbour in the London suburb of Valley Fields. When their paths cross, the ensuing misunderstandings lead to vintage Wodehouse comedy.

Freddie Widgeon wants the money to buy shares in a coffee plantation in Kenya so that he can marry Sally Foster. Soapy and Dolly Molloy want to get their hands on a cache of…

If I Were You is Wodehouse's comic variation on a favourite theme of Victorian melodrama - the changeling. Did old Nannie Price really substitute her own child for the infant son of the late Lord and Lady Droitwich while they were away in India? If so, Tony Droitwich is heir, not to rolling acres and a stately pile, but to a barber's shop in London's West End. With Socialist Syd Price determined to prove himself the new earl, and Tony's haughty relations determined that he shall not, the stage is set for an amusing battle, waged by a familiar Wodehousean cast of fat butlers, tough aunts, lively American girls and drawling dandies.

If I Were You is Wodehouse's comic variation on a favourite theme of Victorian melodrama - the changeling. Did old Nannie Price really substitute her own child for the infant son…

When an impoverished but charming Englishman, Archie Moffam, marries the daughter of tough American millionaire Daniel Brewster, the stage is set for a characteristic Wodehouse encounter between characters, cultures and nations. Much of the action takes place in Brewster’s New York hotel where Archie eventually emerges triumphant, but only after a series of comic misadventures involving a snake, a waiter, a pie-eater, a song-writer, a tearful union leader and a volcanic cabaret singer.

When an impoverished but charming Englishman, Archie Moffam, marries the daughter of tough American millionaire Daniel Brewster, the stage is set for a characteristic Wodehouse…

When Jill Mariner is arrested for fighting over a parrot and then loses all her money on the same day, she is abandoned by her pompous fiancé and goes to stay with her rich relations on Long Island. Uncle Elmer is delighted to see her – until he finds out that Jill is penniless. Heading for New York, she ends up in the chorus of a musical comedy on Broadway where she eventually finds the man of her dreams. A light romantic comedy in Wodehouse’s most charming manner.

When Jill Mariner is arrested for fighting over a parrot and then loses all her money on the same day, she is abandoned by her pompous fiancé and goes to stay with her rich…

This volume reprints two of Wodehouse’s earliest books which take the form of story sequences linked by a central character, a technique he used many times thereafter. Delightful in themselves, they are interesting chiefly as windows on a great writer’s early evolution.

In The Man of Means, he looks forward to Bertie Wooster and Ukridge, but also back to his Victorian models, in a fantastic tale of the little man struggling with fate. When a humble clerk comes into a fortune, he embarks on a series of misadventures which suggest that wealth is not necessarily an unmixed blessing. Here we see signs of the satirical writer Wodehouse might have become, and the spirit of Chaplin is not far away.

This volume reprints two of Wodehouse’s earliest books which take the form of story sequences linked by a central character, a technique he used many times thereafter. Delightful…

A Hollywood star and an English aristocrat exchange souls while under ether at the dentist and the result is mayhem. Though his golden curls and sweet expression make him the idol of mothers throughout America, Joey Cooley is a tough nut who wants nothing more than to revenge himself on the agents, directors and producers who make his life a misery, before escaping back to Ohio. When his soul is transplanted into the body of an English earl with a boxing Blue he has the chance to 'poke them all in the snoot'. Lord Havershot, meanwhile, finds himself under the thumb of the fierce Miss Brinkmeyer and terrorized by the boy stars Joey has supplanted. The result is Anglo-American farce with the lightest of touches.

A Hollywood star and an English aristocrat exchange souls while under ether at the dentist and the result is mayhem. Though his golden curls and sweet expression make him the idol…

It all starts with an umbrella, the best to be found in the Drones Club. From such an innocent beginning Wodehouse weaves a comic tale of suspense and romance involving one of his most distinctive early heroes, Ronald Eustace Psmith, monocled wit and devil-may-care boulevardier. Unusually for Wodehouse, this is not only a light comedy but also an adventure story in which crime and even gun-play drive the plot.

It all starts with an umbrella, the best to be found in the Drones Club. From such an innocent beginning Wodehouse weaves a comic tale of suspense and romance involving one of his…

In these articles first produced for magazines and substantially rewritten for book publication, Wodehouse reveals his enduring brilliance as a comic writer of topical essays. But the move out of fiction does not mean a move into unfamiliar territory: any reader of Wodehouse's stories will be familiar with the topics covered here which preoccupied him all his life, ranging from Shakespeare, Hollywood and musical comedy, to butlers, thrillers, ocean liners and income tax.

In these articles first produced for magazines and substantially rewritten for book publication, Wodehouse reveals his enduring brilliance as a comic writer of topical essays. But…

This is the tale of Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, one of Wodehouse’s favourite protagonists, and his fraught attempt to establish a business farming chickens on the coast of Dorset. The story is told by Jeremy Garnet through whose bemused eyes we observe the magnificent Ukridge at work while following Garnet’s own chequered romance with the daughter of a neighbouring professor.

This is the tale of Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, one of Wodehouse’s favourite protagonists, and his fraught attempt to establish a business farming chickens on the coast of…

A stalwart of the Angler's Rest, where he is usually to be found in company with Miss Postlethwaite the barmaid, Mr Mulliner has an endless supply of brothers, nephews and cousins who feature in the tales with which he entertains the regulars in his favourite pub. There is George, the stammerer, who finds the courage to propose only after being chased by a mob; Wilfred, the chemist, who muddles his cosmetic potions with dire results; Lancelot, the film star; William, the lover of Myrtle Banks; Clarence, the society photographer; and Augustine, the curate, who saves his bishop from disgrace at the school reunion. All win through to love and success, but only after enough farcical mishaps to supply a dozen ordinary comic novelists.

A stalwart of the Angler's Rest, where he is usually to be found in company with Miss Postlethwaite the barmaid, Mr Mulliner has an endless supply of brothers, nephews and cousins…

An early Wodehouse novel, this is both a sporting story and a tale of friendship between two boys at boarding school. Mike (introduced in the novel Mike at Wrykyn) is a seriously good cricketer who forms an unlikely alliance with old Etonian Psmith (‘the P is silent’) after they both find themselves fish out of water at a new school, Sedleigh, where they eventually overcome the hostility of others and their own prejudices to become stars

Even readers uninterested in cricket are likely to be gripped by descriptions of matches, and the plot, though slight, reaches a satisfying conclusion. But the real meat of the book is to be found in the characters, especially the elegant Psmith, one of Wodehouse’s immortal creations, who features in three of his later novels.

An early Wodehouse novel, this is both a sporting story and a tale of friendship between two boys at boarding school. Mike (introduced in the novel Mike at Wrykyn) is a seriously…

In this charming story of the Jackson cricketing dynasty at boarding school, Wodehouse evokes the peaceful, prosperous world of middle-class England before the Great War, a place where rich men hire private cricket professionals to coach their sons at home, and little seems to matter at school except the publishing of team lists and the taking of tea. But such is the novelist’s skill that he can make excitement from the small-scale dramas of teenage life, and interest even the most unsporting reader in the cricket matches he describes so lovingly. A curiosity for those who know only the Wodehouse of Blandings and Piccadilly, but a delightful one.

In this charming story of the Jackson cricketing dynasty at boarding school, Wodehouse evokes the peaceful, prosperous world of middle-class England before the Great War, a place…

When Chimp Twist, the dodgy proprietor of Healthward Ho health farm in Worcestershire, joins forces with partners in crime Dolly and Soapy Molloy, the result is bound to be trouble for someone – in this case overweight Lester Carmody, squire of nearby Rudge Hall, Carmody's nephew, John, and John's childhood sweetheart, Pat Wyvern. In a light comedy of transatlantic manners, Wodehouse brings together two of his favourite worlds, as zesty American con-artists impinge on the sleepy backwoods of rural England to delightful effect.

When Chimp Twist, the dodgy proprietor of Healthward Ho health farm in Worcestershire, joins forces with partners in crime Dolly and Soapy Molloy, the result is bound to be…