WODEHOUSE, P.G. Annotated typescript of Uncle Dynamite.

Finishing Touches

WODEHOUSE, P.G. Annotated typescript of Uncle Dynamite. New York. [c. 1947–48.]

Three parts in two volumes, folio. Later card wrappers with leatherette fasteners (280 x 5 mm), titles lettered in manuscript, housed in a custom red cloth clamshell box; typescript with text to rectos only; vol. I: ff. [1], 64, [1], 65–130; vol. II: ff. [1], 131–287; f. 287 comprising half a page and mounted to blank paper (by Wodehouse?); corrected and annotated in pencil by Wodehouse throughout; red pencil note to title ‘Hotel Adams | 2 E 86th St | New York City’; newspaper clipping ‘P.G. Wodehouse vs. J.B. Priestley’ by Frank Conniff pasted to f. 64v (see below).

A late typescript draft, with Wodehouse’s final manuscript corrections, of the second Uncle Fred novel, written in Europe during the Second World War.

Uncle Fred, having first appeared in the short story ‘Uncle Fred Flits By’ (1935) and the novel Uncle Fred in the Springtime (1939), returns here under the guise of Major Brabazon-Plank to rescue his nephew from a fall from grace, after the latter accidentally destroys two precious works of art from his future father-in-law’s collection.

Wodehouse completed Uncle Dynamite while moving around France in the bitter winter of 1944–45. In September 1943 the Germans had allowed him to move with his wife Ethel to Paris; on 20 November 1944, following the liberation of Paris, he was arrested by the French on suspicion of collaboration, although no charges were presented. He was soon released on medical grounds but remained detained in hospital until 15 January 1945.

Having secured American visas the previous year, the Wodehouses sailed to New York in April 1947, taking up residence at the Adams Hotel, 2 East 86th Street, where they remained until 1948. It is there that Wodehouse gave his final touches to Uncle Dynamite, which was finally published in the United Kingdom on 22 October 1948 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on 29 November 1948 by Didier & Co., New York.

The corrections in our draft include the replacement of words with synonyms, the deletion of sentences, and the insertion of new ones. All appear in the final printed version, with only very occasional, minor differences in punctuation. This suggests that the draft may have been the last typescript of the novel to be corrected in Wodehouse’s own hand.

On the verso of the final leaf of part I, Wodehouse has pasted a clipping of Frank Conniff’s article ‘P.G. Wodehouse vs. J.B. Priestley’, published in his ‘East Side, West Side’ column in the New York Journal-American. In it, Wodehouse defended New York as a ‘brisk and stimulating city’: ‘New York’s a grand town … Priestley is just trying to be as significant as usual if he says anything different’.

SKU: 2126350