P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975)

A collection of 25 early Wodehouse stories, all of them boarding school stories, that had not been collected anywhere. Before his famous comedy writing, Wodehouse started his career writing school stories for children's magazines, and this is a sample of that.

As a fan of school stories, I found it enjoyable but irregular, with some good stories and some forgettable ones. If you are a fan of Wodehouse's comedy (Jeeves and so on), these may disappoint you because it won't be what you are looking for, but Wodehouse was still a talented writer, even at this early stage.… (more)

The last and best-known of Wodehouse's school novels. It has two distinct parts. In the first, "Mike at Wrykyn", we are introduced to Mike Jackson, the youngest boy in a family of great cricket players. His father even hires a professional player to coach the boys in the summer. At the beginning of the book, Mike is sent to a boarding school called Wrykyn, with a strong cricketing tradition. The first part of the book is about Mike's adventures at Wrykyn, both on the cricket field and elsewhere. It's a traditional boarding school story, with a lot of emphasis on sports, but also on other schoolboy escapades. Think "Tom Brown's School Days" but with a lot of cricket games.

The second part, "Mike and Psmith", takes place a few years later. Mike's father has withdrawn him from Wrykyn due to his bad grades and sent him against his will to Sedleigh, a smaller, less-prestigious school without a first class cricket team. Mike is disgusted at losing the opportunity to be the captain of the Wrykyn team and his intention is not to play for his new school. At Sedleigh, he meets and befriends Psmith, who is also new at the school, after being expelled from Eton. This second part is also a traditional boarding school story with plenty of cricket, but at the same time it's more similar to Wodehouse famous comedy writing (thanks to Psmith, a fast-talking, charmingly roguish character who shares the spotlight with Mike in this second part).

As a fan of boarding school stories, I always feel a disconnect when I read readers' reviews of Wodehouse's school stories. The people writing those reviews do not like school stories. They are fans of Wodehouse's comedy writing, and that's what they are looking for. Therefore, they like the second part of the novel much more than the first, since Psmith is precisely the type of character they want. I, on the other hand, liked both parts of the story about the same. The first part is more sport-focused, and the main plot is an underdog trying to secure a place in the school's first eleven in his first year there (underdog is a relative term here, because Mike is exceptionally talented at cricket, but also younger and physically weaker than the players he has to compete against to get on the team). The second part has a fair amount of cricket too, but Psmith steals the show.

To be honest, I sometimes got a bit tired of Psmith and all his talking, but he is funny, and I appreciated that, when it counts, his heart is in the right place.

Wodehouse assumes that his readers understand cricket here. If you know nothing of cricket, the descriptions of the matches and the cricket slang may be a bit tough for you, and you won't understand what exactly is going on, although you'll probably be able to follow what team and what players are doing well. I have some (very basic) notions of cricket and I like sport stories, so I was fine. For some readers, however, this might be a problem.… (more)

This is enjoyable, inconsequential escapism. I admit I'm no big fan of humor literature, but this was pleasant to read and held my attention. There was an element of "why should I care about the silly problems of these silly upper-class people?", but there's something archetypal in the not-too-bright but well-meaning Bertie Wooster and the inimitable Jeeves, a well-educated gentleman's gentleman who is always ready with a suggestion to get his employer out of trouble.

The story is pleasant nonsense, full of misunderstandings, slapstick, romantic entanglements and inheritances, with Wooster always willing to lend a helping hand to a pal in need, and causing lots of trouble until the always perfectly polite Jeeves helps him out. Don't expect constant laughter, but you can expect a certain level of general amusement and some particularly funny passages.… (more)

This is a bit different from other early Wodehouse school stories: It's very much a public school story, set in a boarding school and with schoolboys as main characters. We have some of the usual tropes of the genre: sports, a fistfight, schoolboy antics... However, this one is unusual because it's also an adventure story. Wodehouse once wrote that "The worst of school life from the point of view of the writer is that nothing ever happens." Well, in this serial novel of his (it was originally serialized in a magazine for boys and only much later published in book form) things sure do happen. A lot of things, many of them suspenseful and dangerous.

During his holidays, a boy named Jimmy Stewart receives the visit of a soldier who served under Jimmy's father in India. The soldier wanted to see his former commanding officer, but the old man is away in Africa hunting. The soldier starts telling a wild tale of having been entrusted a precious stone he is supposed to give to Jimmy's father and having dangerous people after him, but then he is shot and he ends up entrusting the stone to Jimmy. The boy decides to take it with him to school to keep it safe until his father returns.

It's a light and fast to read story, and it works well both as a school story and as a pulp adventure. It's what nowadays we would call a YA adventure story. Fans of his humorous writing are often disappointed with these early stories because they are not really comedies, and the same happens with this one. There are a few funny scenes related to school life, but on the whole it's not a comedy. It's a ripping yarn, however, with the mandatory cliffhangers every two chapters to keep the readers on edge until the next instalment.… (more)