WODEHOUSE, P.G. Enter Psmith.

Offset from the UK Edition

WODEHOUSE, P.G. Enter Psmith. New York: Polygraphic Company of America for The Macmillan Company. 1935.

8vo. Publisher’s orange cloth, spine lettered in black, in the illustrated dust-jacket by Anderson with printed price of $2.00 to front flap; pp. viii, 247, [1 (blank)]; light wear to spine ends of jacket with small chip at head not touching text, a few nicks to extremities, spotting to verso of jacket and light spotting to top-edge of textblock, some soiling to cloth; a few small marks to half-title; very good.

First US edition thus, second issue (by McIlvaine’s account the first) of the first standalone appearance of the ‘old Etonian’, offset from the first UK edition.

Enter Psmith reprints chapters 30–59 of Mike (1909) as a standalone novel, comprising the second half of Wodehouse’s sixth school novel featuring Ronald Psmith, whose ‘preliminary P before the name … is silent. Like the tomb.’. Enter Psmith was first published in the UK on 14 February 1935, with the present US edition following on 17 September 1935.

This edition, with the Macmillan logo to the half-title verso, was offset from the first A & C Black edition, although McIlvaine here introduces several errors in comparing this issue to A12d.2, which used imported sheets. ‘To add to the potential confusion, Gould’s 2002 catalogue also states that McIlvaine’s entries “are themselves backwards”. Therefore, according to Gould, the first issue is the one printed in the UK with both Macmillan’s and A & C Black’s names on the title-page (i.e. A12d2), and the second issue is the one printed in the US with only Macmillan’s name on the title page’ (Townend, p. 25).

Mcllvaine A12d. See Townend, ‘Bibliographical Corner’, in Wooster Sauce 98 (June 2021), pp. 24–25.

SKU: 2126267