WODEHOUSE, P.G. Mike.

‘Undoubtedly His Best Work’ (Orwell)

WODEHOUSE, P.G. Mike. London: Adam & Charles Black.1909.

8vo. Publisher’s green pictorial cloth illustrated in dark blue-green, red, and white, spine lettered in gilt and dark blue-green; pp. [12], 339, [1]; 12 black-and-white plates by T.M.R. Whitwell including frontispiece; slightly cocked, slight rubbing to upper board and to spine ends; light foxing to a few pp. (heavier to half-title and pp. 83 and 145), some offsetting to endpapers; otherwise very good; contemporary ownership inscription of Frank S. Hibbs to front free endpaper.

First edition, first printing of the first novel to feature the character Psmith.

In Mike, Wrykyn School makes a reappearance, and cricket is again at the heart of the story. Originally serialised in The Captain as two different stories, titled ‘Jackson Junior’ and ‘The Lost Lambs’, between April 1907 and October 1908, the novel introduced one of Wodehouse’s best-known characters, Rupert Psmith. The first half of the story was republished as Mike at Wrykyn (1953), while the second half was later reworked as Enter Psmith (1935) and, later, as Mike and Psmith (1953).

Wodehouse famously regarded Mike as his best work. Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–1990) recalled introducing Wodehouse to George Orwell in Paris in 1944, where the two ‘just talked cricket’. When Muggeridge mentioned that Wodehouse considered this ‘surely immature schoolboy story’ his best book, Orwell replied: ‘Wodehouse is perfectly right. Mike is undoubtedly his very best book’ (Muggeridge, pp. 231–32).

McIlvaine Al2a. See Muggeridge, Chronicles of Wasted Time II: The Infernal Grove (1973).

SKU: 2126111