WODEHOUSE, P.G. How Right You Are, Jeeves.

Presented to Lord Citrine

WODEHOUSE, P.G. How Right You Are, Jeeves. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1960.

8vo. Publisher’s cloth-backed orange and white patterned boards, lettered in black to spine, in unclipped first-printing dust-jacket by Paul Bacon; pp. [8], 183, [1 (blank)]; extremities of jacket a little rubbed with small hole to fold of lower panel, light spotting to cloth spine and edges of textblock, corners and spine ends bumped; light offsetting to front free endpaper (from bookplate); presentation inscription ‘To Lord Citrine with a million thanks …’ in blue ink to front free endpaper; contemporary armorial bookplate of Walter McLennan Citrine, 1st Baron Citrine to front pastedown (see below).

First edition, first printing of the eighth Jeeves and Wooster title, this a presentation copy warmly inscribed by Wodehouse to Walter McLennan Citrine, First Baron Citrine (1887–1983), thanking him for his help on Service with a Smile (1961).

In this story, Bertie finds himself at Brinkley Court with Sir Roderick Glossop and Bobbie Wickham, while Uncle Tom’s prized silver cow-creamer goes missing. The book was published in the UK a few months later by Herbert Jenkins, under the title Jeeves in the Offing.

This copy was presented to Lord Citrine ‘with a million thanks | for Acton and all the | help on SERVICE WITH | A SMILE [...] That is the title at present, | but I bet they will | want to change it – they | always do!’. In this case, Wodehouse’s proposed title remained unchanged. Lord Citrine was the long-serving General Secretary of the Trades Union Congress (TUC), and a key wartime adviser to Winston Churchill. He later sat in the House of Lords, where he spoke on economic and industrial affairs. An amateur cornet player and palmist, he was also a keen book collector.

McIlvaine A83a.

SKU: 2126090