New!!!   12-Jan-2024: New annotations to Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves added to Annotations section
1-Jan-2024: US copyright law finally allows 1928 publications to go into public domain in the USA: see What’s New menu for many new items
31-Oct-2023: New annotations to Uncle Dynamite added to Annotations section

Introduction

THIS SITE is dedicated to the early writings of Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. The Wodehouse material collected on this site was all copyrighted before the end of 1928 and is available in the public domain in the United States. We are grateful to the Wodehouse Estate for their approval of our efforts in making these works available here. However, in many other countries, particularly the UK and much of Europe, the copyright of the Wodehouse Literary Estate will extend through the year 2045. Users outside the USA should consider local copyright laws before downloading material from the site.

For information on buying authorized editions of P. G. Wodehouse’s books, visit the “Buy PGW Books” page in the navigation bar above.

Two new books on Wodehouse have recently been published by regular contributors to this site. The third edition of Who’s Who in Wodehouse by Daniel H. Garrison and Neil Midkiff includes capsule biographies of over four thousand characters created by Plum. John Dawson’s P. G. Wodehouse’s Early Years: His Life and Work 1881–1908 provides new research and a fresh perspective on Wodehouse’s childhood and the first years of his professional career, with a full transcription of his journal of early publications. Both these volumes are self-published; ordering information is on each book’s page on this site at the links in this box.

Sir Pelham (P. G. Wodehouse to his publishers, Plum to his family and his fans) is one of the greatest comic writers of all time. His work has been enjoyed by generations of readers, including successful authors such as Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers, Rudyard Kipling, George Orwell, Evelyn Waugh, Douglas Adams, and J. K. Rowling. His books about the bungling Bertie Wooster and his omniscient valet Jeeves; the saga of Clarence, Earl of Emsworth, the absent-minded seigneur of Blandings Castle; the Oldest Member’s stories on Golf; and the tales told by Mr. Mulliner—all will be read as long as the English language continues to be spoken and read around the world.

In addition to writing more than 90 books, Plum was also very active in the world of musical comedies. He has over 250 lyrics to his credit. He also contributed many articles and stories to magazines like The Saturday Evening Post, Vanity Fair, Punch, and even Playboy.

Today Wodehouse is read all over the world, and there are various local and worldwide bodies that meet frequently to discuss his works. Many of his books and plays have been adapted for radio, the theater, movies, and television. His popularity spans generations and his fans range from pre-teens to centenarians.

What is available

The Madame Eulalie site was started by members of the Yahoo! Blandings group, with the noble aims to (a) provide the text for early Wodehouse items which were never published in book form; (b) provide the text and graphics for stories and serialized novels which appeared in magazines, all published prior to 1929; and (c) provide annotations and other information, such as essays and analysis.

We currently have a very extensive collection (over 1,370 items) of stories, serial episodes, articles, and poems by Plum, which can be accessed via the Items by Publication and Items by Title menus; links are in the navigation bar at the top of every page. In addition to Wodehouse’s writings and the illustrations originally appearing with them, many of the items (well over 420, and growing!) have explanatory annotations and endnotes; the symbol ✎ in the menus for each periodical indicates the presence of these notes. We also have extensive annotations for many of the stories and books published after 1928, therefore still in USA copyright, so not reprinted here; for these, you supply the book, and we provide the footnotes. The menu of annotations is just one of the items you can find at the Notes & Lists link in the navigation bar; other resources include lists of verses, lists of stories with recurring characters, extensive bibliographic information, and essays and articles applying to more than a single story.

We are also pleased to present the publications of the P. G. Wodehouse Globe Reclamation Project, which is working to identify, collect, and study Wodehouse’s contributions to the Globe newspaper and its “By The Way” column during his first decade as a journalist.

Other members had been diligently working on annotations, bibliography, etc. on their own sites:

  • Terry Mordue’s “Celebration of Wodehouse” which has a wonderful array of information for the Wodehouse fan. Sadly, Terry passed away suddenly on the 25th of February 2012 and will be greatly missed. With the collaboration of his family, his pages are now hosted on this site.
  • Father Rob Bovendeaard’s “Biblia Wodehousiana”, which has the very specific aim of annotating all the Biblical references in Wodehouse’s books. Fr Rob, who had a very nearly complete set of Biblical annotations on his website, is no longer actively working on his annotations, and his website was moved to Terry’s site, then to this site. With the assistance of a few new editors, work has begun on annotating some of the remaining books; see the “What’s New” page for updates. Contact us if you are interested in contributing.
  • Arthur Robinson’s reference pages of addenda and errata to the Wodehouse bibliographies, lists of Wodehouse interviews, references to W. S. Gilbert in Wodehouse, and links to Wodehouse items on Google Books had been hosted at his university site, but technical problems prevented their being updated there, so we are now proud to host his lists and notes.
  • Neil Midkiff’s web pages of bibliographic information on Wodehouse’s novels and short stories, long hosted on his email provider’s personal web pages, have been relocated to this site.
  • Diego Seguí has been compiling a list of Shakespeare quotations and allusions in Wodehouse’s works, and with the aid of the Madame Eulalie team, has shared the fruits of that research on this site.

Each of their pages can be accessed by means of the buttons in the right sidebar of this page, and these pages as well as other articles, reference lists, and interesting material can be reached from the Notes & Lists menu in the blue navigation bar above. Other helpful web pages hosted elsewhere can be reached from the Links menu in the navigation bar.

While there are many others who have contributed to the site, we would like to extend special thanks to Tony Ring. Tony was instrumental in getting the recognition of the Wodehouse Trustees for our site, and to get their permission for us to solicit pre-1929 material from non-US residents. Tony further helped us by providing copies of some incredibly rare items which we could not obtain elsewhere.

This site is a work in progress, and we will continue to add more stories, poems, articles, and annotations as time goes by. Contact us if you want to help.

Enjoy what is available, and keep coming back!