![WODEHOUSE, Pelham Grenville (1881-1975). Autograph manuscript and typescript of the novel Much Obliged, Jeeves, occasionally dated in working notes [c.May-August 1970], comprising a typescript with numerous autograph emendations for the complete text, 7 pages, 4to, wholly in autograph, and 170 pages, 4to, typescript, tipped into the pages of an album, brown morocco; and working notes for the novel, comprising 34 pages, 4to in a 'Criterion compositions' notebook and 35 pages, autograph, and 15 pages, typescript, loose, in a roan-backed box.](https://www.christies.com/img/LotImages/2003/CKS/2003_CKS_06824_0229_000(064223).jpg?w=1)
Details
WODEHOUSE, Pelham Grenville (1881-1975). Autograph manuscript and typescript of the novel Much Obliged, Jeeves, occasionally dated in working notes [c.May-August 1970], comprising a typescript with numerous autograph emendations for the complete text, 7 pages, 4to, wholly in autograph, and 170 pages, 4to, typescript, tipped into the pages of an album, brown morocco; and working notes for the novel, comprising 34 pages, 4to in a 'Criterion compositions' notebook and 35 pages, autograph, and 15 pages, typescript, loose, in a roan-backed box.
Beginning with Wooster contemplating in a fatefully happy mood 'the toothsome eggs and bacon which Jeeves had given of his plenty', Much Obliged, Jeeves incorporates the theft of the famous book of the Junior Ganymede Club, the confusions of an election campaign, and Wooster's fevered attempts to avoid engagement to Madeline Bassett.
P.G. Wodehouse was famous for his professionalism as a writer, and the typescript, together with the extensive working notes, show in considerable detail the care with which Jeeves' and Wooster's adventures are constructed. The working notes are almost exclusively concerned with plotting, and show the development of the novel from isolated ideas (the majority of them left unused), which are stringently appraised -- 'v. good', 'Try this', 'I don't think this will work'. Wodehouse's approach to plotting was highly self-aware, and includes references not only to comic potential ('Get comedy from him remembering about Bertie & the Swan'), and later plot needs ('NOTE: This is a plant for the subsequent row between Madeline and Spode and may not be used. I may be able to get some better reason for the row'), but also to his own previous works ('Try to get a start as in The Mating Season'). The full typescript shows equally meticulous attention to the detail of Wodehouse's prose, usually showing several alterations to each page, with some pages having hardly a line unaltered.
In an interview in the last year of his life, Wodehouse commented on his preparatory work that it usually ran to 'about four hundred pages of notes. I write down everything that comes into my mind, and about half of it is about characters that aren't in the book at all'.
Much Obliged, Jeeves was published in 1971. (3)
Beginning with Wooster contemplating in a fatefully happy mood 'the toothsome eggs and bacon which Jeeves had given of his plenty', Much Obliged, Jeeves incorporates the theft of the famous book of the Junior Ganymede Club, the confusions of an election campaign, and Wooster's fevered attempts to avoid engagement to Madeline Bassett.
P.G. Wodehouse was famous for his professionalism as a writer, and the typescript, together with the extensive working notes, show in considerable detail the care with which Jeeves' and Wooster's adventures are constructed. The working notes are almost exclusively concerned with plotting, and show the development of the novel from isolated ideas (the majority of them left unused), which are stringently appraised -- 'v. good', 'Try this', 'I don't think this will work'. Wodehouse's approach to plotting was highly self-aware, and includes references not only to comic potential ('Get comedy from him remembering about Bertie & the Swan'), and later plot needs ('NOTE: This is a plant for the subsequent row between Madeline and Spode and may not be used. I may be able to get some better reason for the row'), but also to his own previous works ('Try to get a start as in The Mating Season'). The full typescript shows equally meticulous attention to the detail of Wodehouse's prose, usually showing several alterations to each page, with some pages having hardly a line unaltered.
In an interview in the last year of his life, Wodehouse commented on his preparatory work that it usually ran to 'about four hundred pages of notes. I write down everything that comes into my mind, and about half of it is about characters that aren't in the book at all'.
Much Obliged, Jeeves was published in 1971. (3)
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