Blandings Castle [Hardcover]

P.G. Wodehouse (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 2002

Fans of P. G. Wodehouse's comic genius are legion, and their devotion to his masterful command of hilarity borders on obsession. Overlook happily feeds the obsession with four more antic selections from the master.

Blandings Castle is a collection of tales concerning Lord Emsworth and the Threepwood clan, while Jeeves in the Offing finds Bertie Wooster in yet another scrape-with the peerless Jeeves out of sight, on vacation! Poor Bertie nearly becomes unstuck! Young Men in Spats is Wodehouse at his most sparkling: stories concerning members of the inimitable Drones Club-they may be small of brain and short on cash but they are always good for ingenious adventures. And in The Luck of the Bodkins, the action spans London, New York, Hollywood, and several transatlantic liners, as three dapper young men find themselves in various Wodehousian predicaments concerning their love lives and finances.

Each volume has been reset and printed on Scottish cream-wove, acid-free paper, sewn and bound in cloth. These novels are elegant and essential additions to any Wodehouse fan's library.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Originally published in 1935, this book contains 12 short stories, only half of which are about Lord Emsworth and his Blandings estate. The rest are a miscellany, most of which are told by Mr. Mulliner, the indefatigable liar of the Angler's Rest. Moreover, while British actor James Saxon's reading is certainly competent, it doesn't reach the levels of inspiration of such other Wodehouse readers as Jonathan Cecil and Frederick Davidson. For an author who wrote nearly 100 books, Wodehouse struck a pretty high average; however, not everything he wrote was unalloyed gold. Blandings Castle contains flecks of the noble metal but also a large enough proportion of base metals to cause one to pause before purchasing this volume. Essential reading to Emsworth devotees but otherwise of only peripheral interest. R. Kent Rasmussen, Thousand Oaks, CA
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From the Back Cover

A Blandings collection

The ivied walls of Blandings Castle have seldom glowed as sunnily as in these wonderful stories – but there are snakes in the rolling parkland ready to nip Clarence, the absent-minded Ninth Earl of Emsworth, when he least expects it.

For a start the Empress of Blandings, in the running for her first prize in the Fat Pigs Class at the Shropshire Agricultural Show, is off her food ­– and can only be coaxed back to the trough by a call in her own language. Then there is the feud with Head Gardener McAllister, aided by Clarence’s sister, the terrifying Lady Constance, and the horrible prospect of the summer fête – twin problems solved by the arrival of a delightfully rebellious little girl from London. But first of all there is the vexed matter of the custody of the pumpkin.

Skipping an ocean and a continent, Wodehouse also treats us to some unputdownable stories of excess from the monstrous Golden Age of Hollywood. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 301 pages
• Publisher: Overlook Hardcover (November 7, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1585673382
• ISBN-13: 978-1585673384
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #449,361 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Emsworth Stories Are a Stitch; The Mulliners Are Missable, April 3, 2001

By 

Eugene G. Barnes (Dunn Loring, VA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blandings Castle (Hardcover)

The first half of the book, which is devoted to Blandings Castle and Lord Emsworth, is a sheer joy to read (5 stars!). The final chapter of the first half is the oft-anthologized short story "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend," an exquisite tale of how the permanently befuddled old man befriends a young lass from London who is summering in the countryside, and together the two of them set the world straight. In fact, that's just what the Emsworth stories are always about: People thrown together, each having his/her own set of priorities, and how they get what they want by practicing "You scratch my back, I scratch yours." Communicating over the din of one another's priorities is a constant source of humor, the unexpected combination of actions and outcomes is another, and the whole reveals Wodehouse's virtuosic gift for storytelling. The Emsworth stories are hard to beat.

Not so the Mulliner stories that make up the second half of the book (3 stars). Here we have a set of stories with improbable plots about Hollywood in the early talkies days. They rely too much on myths about tons of money floating around Hollywod and the incompetent people who wield all this wealth. Though they were probably pretty well received when they first came out, by a naïve public newly fascinated with Hollywood, they are now rather dated and sometimes too silly to be funny. Plus, Wodehouse shares with Shute and Waugh that singular inability of many an English writer to capture and replicate American-ese. Well, they are not horrible stories; simply relatively uninteresting. You can stop with the last Emsworth story in this book and not miss a thing, which is what I recommend.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Eclectic Mix of Blandings Castle and Hollywood Satire, February 3, 2005

By 

Donald Mitchell "Jesus Loves You!" (Thanks for Providing My Reviews over 109,000 Helpful Votes Globally) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Blandings Castle (Hardcover)

Blandings Castle is an unexpected mix of short stories. After P.G. Wodehouse began to weave his novels about Clarence, Ninth Earl of Emsworth, and his improbable family and friends into a series of hilarious stories, he realized that he needed to fill in a gap. He warns that the first six stories in this collection constitute "the short snorts in between the solid orgies." Specifically, these stories tell us about happenings between Leave It to Psmith and Summer Lightning.

You find out more about why Clarence doesn't like to have his son, the Honorable Freddie around. You also learn about how the Empress of Blandings won her first Fat Pigs competition. The Custody of the Pumpkin shows Clarence as a plant-focused competitor before he became a pig-focused one. Mr. Wodehouse also lets us know how Freddie came to marry his wealthy wife and join the dog biscuit business in the States. Some of these stories have plots that could have been turned into novels, which makes the short stories all the better. The most delicious of the stories is a sweet tale of Clarence taking it upon himself to do the right thing in Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend.

The seventh tale is a typical Wodehouse country hullabaloo as Bobbie Wickham manipulates all involved to her advantage in dispatching an unwelcome suitor . . . playing the role for herself the Jeeves and Gally usually play in resolving romantic mishaps. It's clever and ever so liberated.

In the last five stories, P.G. Wodehouse unleashes his dissatisfaction with the Hollywood studios into acid satires of moguls and their foibles. For those who know the Hollywood of those days, these tales are almost biographical. Like the Canterbury Tales, there's a delightful element of exaggeration that makes the humor ever so much more tangy. If you dislike phonies, incompetents and those who are out for only themselves, you'll love these stories. If you don't like biting satire, skip these stories. You'll like the earlier seven.

10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars I love Wodehouse; this is not his best, April 11, 2000

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ltp1 "ltp1" (Manchester, NH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Blandings Castle (Hardcover)

The title's a little misleading; this is a set of 12 stories, and only the first six are at Blandings Castle. I'm a particular Blandings Castle fan -- they're my favorite Wodehouse -- so I was a little disappointed in this one. But, hey, there ARE six fairly good Blandings Castle stories here. Then again, I recommend the novels over the short stories; they're much more fun and engaging. The stories are like eating one M&M and not having any more in the bag. Not enough THERE there. The novels have more time for P.G. to do what he's best at -- weaving tangled plot lines and setting up slapstick.