Wodehouse

Definition: Wodehouse

Wodehouse

Noun

1. English writer known for his humorous novels and stories (1881-1975).

Date "Wodehouse" was first used in popular English literature: sometime before 1896. (references)

Specialty Definition: P. G. Wodehouse

(From Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia)

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (October 15, 1881 - February 14, 1975) was an English comic novelist, most famously described as "English literature's performing flea." His surname is pronounced "Woodhouse", not "Woadhouse".
Best known for the Jeeves and Wooster and Blandings Castle short stories and novels, Wodehouse was also a talented lyricist, who worked with Cole Porter on the musical, Anything Goes.
Nicknamed 'Plum', Wodehouse was educated at Dulwich College, and then worked for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank for two years, though he was never really interested in banking as a career. Having taken up writing seriously, he went to Hollywood, where he was able to earn enormous amounts as a screenwriter. He married in 1914, gaining a stepdaughter.
After a failed attempt to escape from his home at Le Touquet, France, Wodehouse was taken prisoner in Germany during World War II. Encouraged by fellow prisoners to entertain with witty dialogues, he was persuaded by the Germans to make broadcasts from Berlin poking fun at his dilemma. Wartime England was in no mood for light-hearted banter, however, and the broadcasts led to accusations of treachery. Foremost among his critics was A. A. Milne, author of the "Winnie the Pooh" books; Wodehouse got some revenge by creating a ridiculous character named "Timothy Bobbin," who starred in hilarious parodies of some of Milne's children's poetry. Among his defenders was George Orwell (see links below).
The criticism led Wodehouse to move to America. He became an American citizen in 1955, and made only one more visit to his homeland. He was made a Knight of the British Empire (KBE) in 1975, shortly before his death. It is widely believed that the honor was not given earlier because of lingering resentment about the German broadcasts.
Many consider Wodehouse as second only to Charles Dickens in fecundity of character invention. His characters however were not always popular with the establishment, notably the foppish foolishness of Bertie Wooster. Papers released by the Public Record Office have disclosed that when Wodehouse was recommended for a Companion of Honour in 1967, Sir Patrick Dean, British ambassador in Washington, argued that it "would also give currency to a Bertie Wooster image of the British character which we are doing our best to eradicate."
His novels and stories fall into a number of series:

The Blandings books are about the upper-class inhabitants of the fictional Blandings Castle, including the eccentric Earl of Emsworth, obsessed by his prize-winning pig, the "Empress of Blandings".

The Ukridge books are about a scheming character of that name.

Mr. Mulliner is a long-winded pub raconteur who tells outrageous stories about his family.

Many stories were built around the sport of golf, which all characters take deadly seriously, ignoring everything else in life.

The Jeeves and Wooster books, his most famous, feature the ever-optimistic Bertie Wooster, fearsome aunts (Aunts Agatha and Dahlia), and omniscient valet Reginald Jeeves. The raucous Drones Club, a parody of bachelor's clubs once common in London, features in many tales, as does the Junior Ganymede Club, a club for butlers and valets which Jeeves belongs to.

Partial Bibliography

School stories
The Pothunters (1902)
The Gold Bat (1904)
Blandings:
Something Fresh
Summer Lightning
Heavy Weather
Uncle Fred in the Springtime
Full Moon
Uncle Dynamite
Pigs Have Wings
Service with a Smile
Galahad at Blandings
A Pelican at Blandings
Sunset at Blandings
Two books that are part of the Blanding Castle series but not listed above are "Blandings Castle and Elsewhere" (1935) and "Leave It To Psmith" (1923).
Jeeves:
The Inimitable Jeeves (1923)
Carry on Jeeves (1924)
Right Ho, Jeeves (1934)
Thank you, Jeeves (1934)
The Code of the Woosters (1937)
Ring for Jeeves
Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves
Joy in the Morning (1947)
(U.S. title: Jeeves in the Morning)
The Mating Season (1949)
Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954)
Jeeves in the Offing (1960)
Aunts Aren't Gentlemen
Very Good Jeeves
Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971)
(U.S. title: Jeeves and the Tie That Binds)
Psmith:
Psmith, Journalist (1915)
Leave it to Psmith
Psmith in the City
Musical comedies
Kissing Time
Other:
Quick Service (1940)
Laughing Gas (1936)
Performing Flea (Autobiography)
The Indiscretions of Archie (1921)
Piccadilly Jim (1917)
The Little Nugget

Both the Blandings and Jeeves stories have been adapted as BBC television series: the Jeeves series has been adapted twice, once in the 1960s (for the BBC) with Ian Carmichael as Bertie Wooster, and Dennis Price as Jeeves, and again in the 1990s (by Granada Television for ITV), with the title "Jeeves and Wooster," starring Hugh Laurie as Wooster and Stephen Fry as Jeeves. David Niven and Arthur Treacher also starred as Bertie and Jeeves, respectively, in a few films made in the 1930s.

Characters
Jeeves, Bertie Wooster, Gussie Fink-Nottle, Madeline Bassett, Bingo Little, Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps (pronounced Barmy Fungy-Phipps), Oofy Wegg-Prosser, Agatha Gregson (Aunt Agatha), Dahlia Travers (Aunt Dahlia), Earl of Blandings, Psmith, Beech the Butler, Lord Emsworth, Roderick Spode.

Quotations
From Pigs Have Wings:

For an author Jerry Vail was rather nice-looking, most authors, as is widely known, resembling in appearance the more degraded types of fish, unless they look like birds, when they could pass as vultures and no questions asked.

The junior partner of Caine and Cooper, though a man of blameless life, had one of those dark, saturnine faces which suggest a taste for the more sinister forms of crime, and on one cheek of that dark, saturnine face was a long scar. Actually it had been caused by the bursting of a gingerbeer bottle at a Y.M.C.A. picnic, but it gave the impression of being the outcome of battles with knives in the cellars of the underworld.

External links:

In Defence of P.G. Wodehouse -- George Orwell
Stephen Fry on Wodehouse
Blandings Castle located!
Source: adapted by the editor from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia under a copyleft GNU Free Documentation License (GFDL) from the article "P. G. Wodehouse."

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Synonyms: Wodehouse

Synonyms: P. G. Wodehouse (n), Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (n). (additional references)

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Modern Usage: Wodehouse

Domain	Usage
Movie/TV Titles	Wodehouse Playhouse (1975)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Commercial Usage: Wodehouse

Domain	Title
Books	Lives of the Mind: The Use and Abuse of Intelligence from Hegel to Wodehouse (reference) Blandings the blest and the blue blood: a companion to the Blandings Castle Saga of P. G. Wodehouse, with a complete Wodehouse peerage, baronetage & knightage (reference) The Clicking of Cuthbert (Wodehouse, P. G. Collector's Wodehouse,) (reference) A Wodehouse Bestiary (reference) Fore! : The Best of Wodehouse on Golf (reference) (more book examples)
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Usage Frequency: Wodehouse

"Wodehouse" is generally used as a noun (proper) -- approximately 83.33% of the time. "Wodehouse" is used about 30 times out of a sample of 100 million words spoken or written in English. Its rank is based on over 700,000 words used in the English language. Some parts-of-speech are not covered due to the samples used by the British National Corpus. (note: percents less than one-hundredth of one percent have been omitted)

Parts of Speech	Percent	Usage per 100 Million Words	Rank in English
Noun (proper)	83.33%	25	69,787
Noun (singular)	16.67%	5	157,705
Total	100.00%	30	N/A

Source: compiled by the editor from several corpora; see credits.

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Expressions: Wodehouse

Expressions using "Wodehouse": P. G. Wodehouse ♦ Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. Additional references.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Frequency of Internet Keywords: Wodehouse

The following statistics estimate the number of searches per day across the major English-language search engines as identified by various trade publications. Hyperlinks lead to commercial use of the expression at Amazon.com.

Expression	Frequency per Day
wodehouse	26
p.g wodehouse	20
p g wodehouse	19
pg wodehouse	5
jordan wodehouse	4
bibliography wodehouse	2
pelham grenville wodehouse	2
playhouse wodehouse	2
jeeves wodehouse	2
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits.

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Anagrams: Wodehouse

Scrabble® Enable2K-Verified Anagrams
	Words within the letters "d-e-e-h-o-o-s-u-w"
	-2 letters: wooshed.
	-3 letters: housed, shewed, shooed, showed.
	-4 letters: dhows, douse, dowse, heeds, hewed, hoods, hosed, house, howes, oohed, sewed, shoed, sowed, suede, swede, weeds, whose, whoso, woods, wooed, woosh.
	-5 letters: dees, dews, dhow, does, dose, dows, dues, duos, edhs, ewes, heed, hews, hods, hoed, hoes, hood, hose, howe, hows, hued, hues, odes, ohed, oohs, ouds.
Source: compiled by the editor from various references; see credits. SCRABBLE® is a registered trademark. All intellectual property rights in and to the game are owned in the U.S.A and Canada by Hasbro Inc., and throughout the rest of the world by J.W. Spear & Sons Limited of Maidenhead, Berkshire, England, a subsidiary of Mattel Inc. Mattel and Spear are not affiliated with Hasbro.