r/Wodehouse • u/Tresco-dreaming • 25d ago

Young gallivanters in Wodehouse

My favourite in the Wodehouse canon is always younger characters getting up to larks and frivolity in London.

Wodehouse just has such a beautiful way of describing their hijinks. My faves are some of the obvious, young Bertie, Bingo, anything Uncle Fred related (older, but young at heart - “high, wide and handsome”).

Even the twins are absolute gold on this front and anything in the Drones has me spitting out my cocktail in the smoking room.

I’m halfway through Piccadilly Jim and chortling at his antics.

Any ones I am missing from outside the standard Jeeves and Wooster examples?

26 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

5 comments sorted by

7

u/SerDankTheTall 25d ago

The Ukridge stories and the Drones Club collections (Young Men in Spats and Eggs, Beans, and Crumpets) are a good place to start!

2

u/YPLAC 21d ago

"Tried in the furnace" is a masterpiece of a short story. One of my favourite PGs.

5

u/EndersGame_Reviewer 25d ago

anything Uncle Fred related (older, but young at heart - “high, wide and handsome”).

Uncle Fred is easily one of my favourite Wodehouse characters!

3

u/YPLAC 21d ago

If you haven't read Cocktail Time, boy are you in for a treat. It all kicks off when a stuffy old member of another club has his topper knocked of his head by way of a catapulted walnut (from the young gentlemen's club across the street). It just gets better and better from there.

1

u/GalacticaActually 5d ago

Catsmeat Potter-Pirbright remains one of the most tantalizing figures of marginalia in my reading life.