The Uncollected Wodehouse


The Uncollected Wodehouse is a collection of early newspaper and magazine articles and short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. First published in the United States on 18 October 1976 by Seabury Press, New York City, it contains 14 short stories. Five of the stories had appeared in the United Kingdom in the 1914 collection The Man Upstairs, and all had previously appeared in UK periodicals between 1901 and 1915; some had also appeared in the U.S. Five short items are included from 1900–1906 UK magazines, ten from 1914–1919, and nine from the U.S. Vanity Fair magazine.
The collection was edited and introduced by David A. Jasen, with a foreword by Malcolm Muggeridge.

Contents

  • "When Papa Swore in Hindustani"
  • * United Kingdom: Answers, 24 August 1901
According to David A. Jasen, this was the first of multiple sentimental stories that Wodehouse wrote specifically to please magazine editors. Wodehouse did not approve of the title of the story, which was chosen by the Answers staff. The story is very short and is six pages long in the first edition of the collection. For comparison, "The Good Angel" is 15 pages long and "The Man Upstairs" is 16 pages long.
  • "A Corner in Lines"
  • * UK: Pearson's, January 1905
  • "The Autograph Hunters"
  • * UK: Pearson's, February 1905
  • * United States: Metropolitan, November 1922
  • "Tom, Dick–and Harry"
  • * UK: Grand, June 1905
According to Owen Dudley Edwards, "Tom, Dick–and Harry" was published in the 1909 anthology Twenty-Five Cricket Stories, and has a plot that is very similar to that of the Drones Club story "Tried in the Furnace". The story is ten pages long in the first edition of this collection.
The Cosmopolitan story "The Matrimonial Sweepstakes", a reset and slightly lengthened version of "The Good Angel", marks the earliest mention of a Lord Emsworth.
"Misunderstood" is one of the shortest stories in The Uncollected Wodehouse, being eight pages long in the first edition of the collection.
"The Best Sauce" was published in the Strand with illustrations by René Bull. The story is 15 pages long in the first edition of this collection.
"The Harmonica Mystery" was also published in The Saint Detective Magazine in June 1955. "Death at the Excelsior" is the longest story in The Uncollected Wodehouse and is 23 pages long in this collection.
  • "The Test Case"
  • * UK: Pearson's, December 1915
  • * US: Illustrated Sunday Magazine, 12 December 1915
Two of the "articles" collected by Jasen contain dialogue between fictional characters and thus may be considered short-short fiction: "An Unfinished Collection" from Punch, 17 September 1902 and "The Secret Pleasures of Reginald" from Vanity Fair, June 1915.