В феврале 2005 г. издательство Haus издало книгу Дж.Коннолли P G Wodehouse (Life & Times).

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Рецензия в Weekly Standard, The, June 13, 2005 by David Skinner:

P. G. Wodehouse by Joseph Connolly (Haus, 150 pp., $15.95) In the acknowledgments of his mini biography of P. G. Wodehouse, Joseph Connolly complains that the Wodehouse estate refused him permission to quote any of The Master's words. This would appear to be a serious stumbling block for a biographer whose subject poured all of his genius directly into his writing.

What was so great about the writing is, however, a little hard to formulate. Wodehouse's books did not succeed on the strength of a writing style as usually understood. The masterly manipulation of the language that makes, for example, Nabokov's prose so richly poetic was not Wodehouse's thing. And though he seems to be the type of writer who should have produced one-liners by the thousand, because he did write so many funny lines, his style was not very aphoristic. Rereading some of his most famous books turns up precious few examples of great standalones. The choice of individual words and the inflections within sentences were often ingenious, but the greatness seems to have lain in the writing's overall tone and, to use a term borrowed from the textbook industry, ease of reading. Once beguiled into a Wodehouse story, the reader zips through it effortlessly.

Since I, unlike Connolly, enjoy the right to a little quotation, why not let 'er rip? It being still spring, I'll cite a short opening passage from one of Wodehouse's relatively under-celebrated golf stories to illustrate the clear-as-a-songbird tone.

It was a morning when all nature shouted 'Fore!' The breeze, as it blew gently up from the valley, seemed to bring a message of hope and cheer, whispering of chip-shots holed and brassies landing squarely on the meat. The fairway, as yet unscarred by the irons of a hundred dubs, smiled greenly at the azure sky; and the sun, peeping above the trees, looked like a giant golf ball perfectly lofted by the mashie of some unseen god and about to drop dead by the pin of the eighteenth.

Connolly has done something worthy, which is to provide the interested reader with a precise life of ole Plum in just the kind of breezy style one feels compelled to use when writing about Wodehouse. But while the tone is right, the information is needlessly thin in spots. Connolly, for example, mentions that, in revising, Wodehouse would cut out all of his very best stuff. This detail demands further discussion, but none is forthcoming. In another oblique reference to craft, Connolly mentions that Wodehouse had concluded that "every line in a Jeeves story has to tell." How this makes a Jeeves story different from a Psmith story or a story written by someone not named P.G. Wodehouse I am not sure. Connolly, unfortunately, does not use any of the space made available by the Wodehouse quotes he cannot use for explication.

2 сентября 2004 г. вышла долгожданная биография П.Г.Вудхауза, написанная Робертом Маккрамом. Книга Wodehouse: A Life выпущена издательством Viking (Penguin).

P.G. Wodehouse is a comic writer of genius best known for Bertie Wooster and his omniscient manservant Jeeves; the pig-loving peer Lord Emsworth and a regiment of aunts and butlers. But although Wodehouse and his work have become indissolubly part of the English language and its literature, the writer himself is enigmatic. His life, notorious for one historic blunder during the Second World War, remains remarkably unexplored.

Based on research throughout Britain, Europe and the United States, Wodehouse: A Life goes deep beneath the surface of Wodehouse's extraordinary career, and reveals as never before the fascinating complexity of a writer who liked to maintain, against all the evidence, that his life was a 'breeze from start to finish'. In a compelling portrait of a quintessential English writer and his times, Robert McCrum describes Wodehouse's beginnings in Edwardian London, his golden years on Broadway in Jazz Age America; and his adventures in Thirties Hollywood. Wodehouse: A Life is a journey through some of the twentieth century's most turbulent decades, and it culminates in Wodehouse's controversial wartime experience: his internment in Nazi Germany and the broadcasts from Berlin, a fateful decision that haunted him to his death in 1975, and still affects his reputation.

Wodehouse: A Life is the enthralling story of an Englishman who seemed to represent the essence of his age and country, but who, tragically, ended his life at odds with both. Wonderfully funny and, at times, agonisingly moving, this definitive biography brings to life the compelling worlds of Wodehouse's century, while never forgetting for a moment his comic genius.

В США книга выпускается издательством W. W. Norton & Company в ноябре. Обложка американского издания.

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Статья Стивена Фрая в Обсервере 5 сентября 2004 г.

Издательство Scarecrow Press 1 февраля 2004 года выпускает сборник всех текстов Вудхауза к мюзиклам: "The Complete Lyrics of P.G.Wodehouse". Составитель - Barry Day.

Although he wrote hundreds of songs and was a key figure in the birth of the American stage musical, P. G. Wodehouse's (1881-1975) long and influential career as a lyricist has been almost completely forgotten and unheralded-until now. Highly regarded by literati for his rich, sardonic Wooster and Jeeves books (among his more than ninety novels and volumes of short stories), Wodehouse broke new ground by writing songs that were cohesively integrated into the narrative action of musicals rather than presented as a string of unrelated tunes, which was the then-standard format. Particularly in the shows he wrote with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, Wodehouse transformed the musical from a poor man's Gilbert and Sullivan-style operetta into a more idiomatic and respectable form based on contemporary life.

This book sets the lyrics from his nearly forty theatrical productions within the context of each individual show, providing incisive and informative commentary for each. Lavishly illustrated with photos and memorabilia, Barry Day establishes why, throughout the 1920s and 1930s, Wodehouse was considered a top-tier theatrical figure on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Издательство Omnibus Press (Music Sales Group) переиздает биографию П.Г.Вудхауза P.G. Wodehouse: Portrait Of A Master. Автор David A. Jasen. (Обложка)

Издательство Ebury Press выпустило книгу Ричарда Осборна "Plum Sauce: A P.G. Wodehouse Companion" - справочник по персонжам и произведениям Вудхауза.

In witty and idiosyncratic prose Richard Usborne brings order to the vast and tangled fictional world that Wodehouse stitched together in a writing career stretching over 70 years and nearly 100 books. This ‘dip-in’ entertainment introduces us to all the great creations: Jeeves and Wooster, Psmith, Ukridge, Lord Emsworth and the world of Blandings. It offers character sketches of the rest of the Wodehouse cast from Gussie Fink Nottle to the chorus of Aunts and Drones, and witty plot summaries of all Wodehouse’s books. Copiously illustrated with original dust-jacket artwork and sketches from the Strand Magazine, Plum Sauce also has fun with Wodehouse’s incomparable skill with language, the bizarre rules at play in his fictional world, and gathers the choicest nuggets of Wodehouse prose on themes ranging from women to drink. So whether you’re an old hand with Wodehouse in search of further amusement or a novice scratching the old lemon who simply doesn’t know where to start, Plum Sauce is just the ticket to get you out of the soup.
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C 29 ноября 2001 года в продажу поступила книга Барри Дэя и Тони Ринга P.G.Wodehouse: In His Own Words (издательство Hutchinson):

P.G.Wodehouse's novels, stories, letters and non-fiction give a wonderfully funny gloss on the events of his own life, and his lifetime admirer Barry Day has told his story through his own writing. This is a beautifully produced and illustrated gift book, full of brilliant wordplay and hilarious scenes from Wodehouse's writing, unified by an entertaining biographical thread.

Tony Ring has been actively interested in the career of P.G.Wodehouse for over a decade and is President of the International Wodehouse Association.

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31 марта 2003 года эту книгу переиздало издательство Overlook Press.

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Рецензия в The Washington Post