WODEHOUSE, P.G. Cocktail Time.

Presented to a San Francisco Bookseller

WODEHOUSE, P.G. Cocktail Time. New York: Simon & Schuster. 1958.

8vo. Publisher’s pink cloth-backed boards with black sides, spine lettered in black and olive green, in the illustrated dust-jacket designed by Robert Shore with printed price of $3.50 to front flap; pp. [4], 219, [1]; spine of jacket sunned with small chip to head of spine, lower edges of boards a little rubbed; authorial presentation inscription in black ink to front free endpaper dated 28 November 1960 (see below); Wodehouse-inspired bookplate of James H. Heineman to front pastedown.

First US edition, first printing, presented by Wodehouse to the San Francisco book dealer David Magee with wishes for a ‘Happy New Year’.

Cocktail Time, Wodehouse’s third novel to feature Uncle Fred, was first published in a shorter version in the Ladies Home Journal (April 1958). When Uncle Fred knocks Sir Raymond Bastable’s top hat off with a Brazil nut fired from a catapult, the pompous barrister (preparing to stand for Parliament) is persuaded to write a novel exposing the supposed misdeeds of the younger generation. Published anonymously as ‘Cocktail Time’, a series of schemes involving its authorship, royalties and film rights soon ensue.

Provenance:

1. Presented by Wodehouse to Anglo-American bookseller and Wodehouse enthusiast David Magee (1905–1977), author of the Wodehouse-esque comic novel Jam Tomorrow (1941).

2. James Heineman (1917–1994), New York publisher and renowned Wodehouse collector.

Mcllvaine A8lb.

SKU: 2126319