P.G. WARDHOUSE

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) was an English comic writer widely regarded as one of the greatest humorists in twentieth-century literature. Born in Guildford, Surrey, and educated at Dulwich College, he began his career as a journalist before turning to fiction. Over a writing career spanning more than seventy years, he produced over ninety books, along with plays, lyrics for musical comedies, and screenplays.

Wodehouse is best known for his invented worlds of blissful escapism, populated by the idle rich and their long-suffering servants. His most celebrated creations are the bumbling aristocrat Bertie Wooster and his unflappably brilliant valet Jeeves, who appears in novels and short stories such as The Inimitable Jeeves (1923), Thank You, Jeeves (1934), and The Code of the Woosters (1938). Equally beloved is his Blandings Castle series, featuring the absent-minded Lord Emsworth and his prize pig, the Empress of Blandings, notably in Leave It to Psmith (1923).

His prose, admired for its precision, metaphor, and farcical ingenuity, has influenced countless writers. Knighted in 1975, Wodehouse spent his final decades in the United States, where he died in Southampton, New York, leaving behind an unmatched legacy of English comic fiction.