Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE (1881 – February 14, 1975) was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be widely read. Despite the political and social upheavals that occurred during his life, much of which was spent in France and the United States, Wodehouse's main canvas remained that of a pre- and post-World War I English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education and youthful writing career. An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Hilaire Belloc, Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and by modern writers such as Stephen Fry, Christopher Hitchens, Douglas Adams and John Le Carré. Best known today for the Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels and short stories, Wodehouse was also a playwright and lyricist who was part author and writer of 15 plays and of 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies, many of them produced in collaboration with Jerome Kern and Guy Bolton. He worked with Cole Porter on the musical Anything Goes (1934), wrote the lyrics for the hit song "Bill" in Kern's Show Boat (1927), wrote lyrics to Sigmund Romberg's music for the Gershwin – Romberg musical Rosalie (1928) and collaborated with Rudolf Friml on a musical version of The Three Musketeers (1928). He is in the Songwriters Hall of Fame.Wodehouse spent the last decades of his life in the United States, becoming an American citizen in 1955, because of controversy that arose after he made five radio broadcasts from Germany during World War II, where he had been interned by the Germans for a year. Speculation after the broadcasts led to allegations of collaboration and treason. Some libraries banned his books. Although an MI5 investigation later cleared him of any such crimes, he never returned to England.
Wodehouse, called "Plum" (abbreviating "Pelham") by most family and friends, was born prematurely to Eleanor Wodehouse (née Deane; daughter of John Bathurst Deane) at 1 Vale Place, Epsom Road, Guildford, while she was visiting from Hong Kong. He was baptised at St. Nicolas' Church, Guildford. His aunt Mary Deane was the author of the novel Mr. Zinzan of Bath; or, Seen in an Old Mirror. His father, Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845–1929), was a British judge in Hong Kong. The Wodehouse family had been settled in Norfolk for many centuries. Wodehouse's great grandfather The Reverend Philip Wodehouse was the second son of Sir Armine Wodehouse, 5th Baronet, whose eldest son John Wodehouse, 1st Baron Wodehouse, was the ancestor of the Earls of Kimberley. His godfather was Pelham von Donop, after whom he was named. Although Wodehouse and his novels are considered quintessentially English, from 1914 onward he split his time between Britain and the United States. In 1934, he took up residence in France, to avoid double taxation on his earnings by the tax authorities in Britain and the U.S.
Wodehouse's 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 in 1967 for the Order of the Companions of Honour, Sir Patrick Dean, the 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." Wodehouse's characters are often eccentric, with peculiar attachments, such as to pigs (Lord Emsworth), newts (Gussie Fink-Nottle), antique silver (Wooster's Uncle Tom Travers), golf collectibles (numerous characters) or socks (Archibald Mulliner).
His "mentally negligible" good natured characters invariably make their lot worse by their half-witted schemes to improve a bad situation. In many cases the classic eccentricities of Wodehouse's upper class give rise to plot complications. The very first Jeeves story ("Jeeves Takes Charge") concerns an attempt to prevent publication of an old man's memoirs, which contain embarrassing stories about aristocrats and other prestigious persons in their youth. Another subject which features strongly in Wodehouse's plots is alcohol, and many plots revolve around the tipsiness of a major character.
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