Still longing for new episodes of Downton Abbey? As the Chicago Tribune suggests, give
Wodehouse a try. There’s no time like the present, as today brings the two
latest additions to our Collector’s Wodehouse series, The Adventures
of Sally and Mike at Wrykyn. Still not convinced? Just ask British comedic actor, Stephen Fry.
When finished, the Collector’s Wodehouse will be the first
complete hardback series of Wodehouse’s work by any one publisher. In every
case, our editors have gone back to the first editions of each book and
corrected errors that crept into the numerous paperback volumes. Each book has
been re-typeset using the classic English typeface Caslon and printed on
Scottish cream-woven, acid free paper, sewn and bound in full cloth, and
illustrated by Polish artist Andrzej Klimowski.
The Adventures of
Sally is a transatlantic comedy set in worlds Wodehouse knew well: American
theaters and English theatrical boardinghouses where young men and women dream
of finding fame and fortune. Coming into a modest inheritance, one of these
young women, Sally, is able to leave her boardinghouse at last, and looks
forward to a quiet life in a small apartment. Instead she finds herself swept
up in a series of adventures with her ambitious brother and her playwright fiancé,
along with an accident-prone, dog-loving Englishman she meets on a French beach
and his supercilious cousin, who pursue her across the Atlantic. 
In Mike a Wrykyn,
the charming story of the Jackson cricketing dynasty at boarding school,
Wodehouse evokes the peaceful prosperous world of middle-class England before
the Great War, a place where rich men hire private cricket professionals to
coach their sons at home, and little seems to matter at school except the
publishing of team lists and the taking of tea. But such is the novelist’s skill
that he can make excitement from the small-scale dramas of teenage life, and
interest even the most unsporting reader in the cricket matches he describes so
lovingly. A curiosity for those who know only Wodehouse of Blandings and
Piccadilly, but a delightful one.
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