![]() Younger sons of earls do not qualify for a named title of their own but must be content with the appellation of “The Honourable” this style is shared with the sons and daughters of viscounts and barons. In Something Fresh, Lord Emsworth was described as having been “atEton, in the sixties.” If so, he cannot have been more than a year or two fromhis sixtieth birthday when that novel was written. Gertrude Jekyll, Some EnglishGardens, Longmans, Green and Co, London (1904), p. viewed from near at hand, the mightywalls and their sustaining buttresses are seen to be shaggy with vegetation. Its stones are carved and fretted by the wind and rain of centuries tiny mosseshave grown in their cavities. Wodehouse’s description of Blandings Castleclosely mirrors Jekyll’s description of Berkeley Castle: 73–4) argues persuasivelythat the writer was Gertrude Jekyll. 7)Īlan Dean ( Notes & Queries, March 2008, pp. “Rodney Fails to Qualify,” in The Heart of a GoofĪ writer, describing Blandings Castle (p. His brow was furrowed and he had the indefinable look of one who has been smittenin the spiritual solar plexus. The brow was furrowed, the manner distrait, the stomach full of butterflies. A similar great country home, Belpher Castle, appears in A Damsel in Distress (1919), but Wodehouse chose not to extend that saga, which may have been terminated due to Lord Marshmoreton’s marriage, just as the Psmith saga finishes with his marriage in the present novel. We have visited Blandings only once before, in 1915 in Something Fresh (UK)/ Something New (US). 98–99 (1975)Īsso often with Wodehouse’s autobiographical comments, this one is highly inaccurate.He had “got down to it” twice before, and one of the two books, Psmithin the City, had been printed in the US the other, Psmith, Journalist,did not appear there because the plot was incorporated into the US version of ThePrince and Betty, with a P-less Smith as the protagonist. I hadalways intended some day to write of his after-school life, but never quite got downto it. It was the fact that she kept after me like a bloodhound to write another Psmithstory that at length induced me to set typewriter to paper. I was urged to the task by the importunity of my daughter Leonora. According to Wodehouse,it was at Leonora’s urging that he wrote Leave It to Psmith: The book is dedicated to Wodehouse’s adopted daughter, Leonora, his wife Ethel’sdaughter by her first (deceased) husband, Leonard Rowley. Leave It to Psmith is the second novel to be set at Blandings Castle, following Something Fresh (1915) and the fourth and last to featurePsmith, who had previously appeared in Mike (1909), Psmith in the City(1910), and Psmith, Journalist (1915). 11 to 328, so its page numbers usually differ by fewer than four from the ones cited here. Conveniently, the modern Everyman/Overlook reprint edition has similar though not identical pagination its text runs from pp. Page references are to the Herbert Jenkins editions using the first edition plates, issued from 1923 until the Autograph Edition of 1961. These annotations relate to the UK version, although some differences with other editions are noted. In book form, with revisions, it was published in the UK by Herbert Jenkins, London, on 30 November1923 and in the US by George H. The magazine version of the story also appeared serially in the Birmingham Daily Gazette in the UK from 8 November 1923 to 7 January 1924. LeaveIt to Psmith was originally serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in the US beginning 3 February 1923 and in the Grand magazine in the UK from June to December 1923. The notes have been somewhat reformatted and substantially extended by others as credited below, notably Neil Midkiff, but we give many thanks to Mark and Terry for their original efforts, even while we bear the blame for errors of fact or interpretation. The late Terry Mordue ( or for A Gentleman of Leisure) added a great many new entries,modified some of Mark’s comments (largely on the basis of material newly availableonline), and restyled the notes his version is maintained on his web pages hosted here in his memory. LeaveIt to Psmith was originally annotated for the Yahoo! Blandings discussion group by Mark Hodson (aka The Efficient Baxter). The following notes attempt to explain cultural, historical and literary allusionsin Wodehouse’s text, to identify his sources, and to cross-reference similarreferences in the rest of the canon.
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