WODEHOUSE, P.G.; T.M.R. WHITWELL (illustrator). The Gold Bat.

Tarring and Feathering

WODEHOUSE, P.G.; T.M.R. WHITWELL (illustrator). The Gold Bat. London: Adam & Charles Black. 1904.

8vo. Publisher’s red pictorial cloth by S.R. Bolders, spine and upper board lettered in yellow and black; 8 plates by T.M.R. Whitwell including frontispiece; pp. [8], 277, [1 (blank)], [2 (advertisements)]; contemporary chromolithographic scrap depicting a hen and her chick pasted to title-page verso; joints and extremities lightly rubbed, cloth somewhat darkened, top-edge dusty; endpapers somewhat soiled, light spotting to prelims, lightly toned; nonetheless very good.

First edition in book form, first printing of Wodehouse’s third novel, the first title to feature the fictional Wrykyn School.

The Gold Bat follows two Irish students at Wrykyn, O’Hara and Moriarty, who, after the local mayor, Sir Eustace Briggs, makes disparaging remarks about Ireland, sneak out at night to tar and feather a statue of Briggs. They escape detection, but during the escapade O’Hara loses a tiny gold cricket bat he borrowed from his friend Trevor. The novel was first serialised in The Captain from October 1903 to March 1904, with illustrations by Thomas Montague Radclyffe Whitwell (1868–1928), and published in book form on 13 September 1904.

Wrykyn School reappears in The White Feather (1907) and Mike (1909), and is mentioned occasionally in later Wodehouse works.

Mcllvaine A4a.

SKU: 2126332