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Published in USA
Feb 2013
640 pages
Genre: Short Stories/Essays
Publication Information
The definitive edition of the letters - many previously unpublished - of England's greatest comic writer.
P. G. Wodehouse wrote some of the greatest comic masterpieces of all time. So, naturally, we find the same humor and wit in his letters. He offers hilarious accounts of living in England and France, the effects of prohibition, and how to deal with publishers. He even recounts cricket matches played while in a Nazi internment camp (Wodehouse wanted to show the stiff upper lip of the British in the toughest situations). Over the years, Wodehouse corresponded with relatives, friends, and some of the greatest figures of the twentieth century: Agatha Christie, Ira Gershwin, Evelyn Waugh, George Orwell, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The letters are arranged chronologically with intersecting sections of biography written by Sophie Ratcliffe. This is the only book you will need to understand the man behind the characters. 16 pages of photographs
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"Starred Review. Ever droll and witty, the letters burst with insights about the craft of writing, appraisals of his surroundings, and negotiating the vicissitudes of life...The book is an excellent introduction to Wodehouse's life." - Publishers Weekly
"Starred Review. Editor Ratcliffe's (On Sympathy, 2009) generous annotations and judicious edits give scope to a rich, brilliant, happy, oblivious life." - Kirkus
"A Life in Letters gives us the grit along with the wit, including the grubbing and venting that get left out of most readers' mental portrait of the man. In this way, P.G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters is like nothing Wodehouse published in his lifetime, though the sentences are all his, as are the spaces between the lines." - Ed Park of Bookforum
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P. G. Wodehouse was born in England in 1881 and in 1955 became an American citizen. He published more than ninety books and had a successful career writing lyrics and musicals in collaboration with Jerome Kern, Guy Bolton, and Cole Porter, among others.
Sophie Ratcliffe (Editor) is a tutor in English at Christ Church, Oxford. She lives in England.
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