Young Men in Spats

Fate 1931-05 Strand (UK) The Amazing Hat Mystery 1933-08 Cosmopolitan (US) 1934-06 Strand (UK) Good-Bye to all Cats 1934-11 Cosmopolitan (US) 1934-12 Strand (UK) The Luck of the Stiffhams 1933-11 Cosmopolitan (US) 1934-03 Strand (UK) Noblesse Oblige 1934-09 Cosmopolitan (US) 1934-11 Strand (UK) Uncle Fred Flits By 1935-07 Red Book (US) 1935-12 Strand (UK) Archibald and the Masses 1935-08 Cosmopolitan (US) 1936-02 Strand (UK) The Code of the Mulliners 1935-02 Cosmopolitan (US) 1935-04 Strand (UK) The Fiery Wooing of Mordred 1934-12 Cosmopolitan (US) 1935-02 Strand (UK) There's Always Golf! 1936-03 Strand (UK) The Letter of the Law 1936-04 Strand (UK) Farewell to Legs 1935-07-14 This Week (US) 1936-05 Strand (UK)

Eleven short stories, three of them told by Mr Mulliner, all eleven about Dronesmen (Freddie Widgeon, Archibald Mulliner, Pongo Twistleton-Twistleton, Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps and such). Two of the best (The Amazing Hat Mystery and Uncle Fred Flits By) were based on ideas supplied to Wodehouse by his friend Bill Townend.

It's our first meeting with Pongo's irrepressible Uncle Fred, Lord Ickenham, least haughty of earls. He will get star billing in Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939), Uncle Dynamite (1948), Cocktail Time (1958) and Service with a Smile (1962).

In another of the best stories, Tried in the Furnace, there is a heart-breaking girl, a country vicar's daughter, Angelica Briscoe, loved at first sight by two Dronesmen, engaged to somebody else, who turned up again, still young and inexplicably unmarried, thirty-eight years later in the last Bertie/Jeeves novel Aunts Aren't Gentlemen (1974).

Source: Richard Usborne. Plum Sauce. A P G Wodehouse Companion.