WODEHOUSE, P.G. If I Were You.

Family Secrets

WODEHOUSE, P.G. If I Were You. London: Herbert Jenkins Limited. 1931.

8vo. Publisher’s red-orange cloth, spine and upper board lettered in black within black borders, in the illustrated dust-jacket with printed price of 3’6 to spine; pp. 280, [8 (publisher’s advertisements)]; edges of jacket chipped with 20 x 35-mm loss to front panel touching text, some toning and spotting to edges of textblock; a very good copy, scarce in the dust-jacket; 1931 ownership inscription E.L. Hill to front free endpaper.

First UK edition, first printing of this novel, based on an unproduced play of the same name by Wodehouse and Guy Bolton (1884–1979), to whom this book is dedicated.

If I Were You follows the romantic trials of Tony, fifth Earl of Droitwich, whose life is complicated by a long-hidden family secret. The play was never produced, and the story was instead serialised in the US in The American Magazine from April to July 1931, and in the UK in the Daily Mail from 5 June to 3 July 1931. Wodehouse subsequently expanded the text for book publication, with the US edition issued by Doubleday, Doran & Company on 3 September 1931 and this first UK edition following shortly afterwards, published by Herbert Jenkins on 25 September.

Wodehouse and Bolton later adapted the novel into a new play, Who’s Who?, which opened at London’s Duke of York’s Theatre on 20 September 1934.

Mcllvaine A44b.

SKU: 2126100