A St Austin's Shocker
WODEHOUSE, P.G. Tales of St. Austin’s. London: Adam & Charles Black. 1903.
8vo. Publisher’s red pictorial cloth and titles in gold to upper board and spine; pp. 281, [1], [2 (advertisements)]; 12 black-and-white plates by T.M. Whitwell, R. Noel Pocock and E.F. Skinner; occasional foxing and offsetting to endpapers and browning to textblock; hinges fragile but holding, otherwise a very good copy; neat gift inscription ‘Reginald C. Bateman | From E.K.T. | & | A.E.T. | September 9th 1916’ to front free endpaper and small bookseller’s ticket of ‘J.N. Curwood … Bromley, Kent’ to rear pastedown.
First edition, first printing of the third novel in Wodehouse’s school series.
This first printing lacks closing quotation marks on the title-page after The Pothunters and A Prefect’s Uncle, and is also printed without a period in ‘St. Austin’s’. The collection brings together twelve short stories and four essays set at the fictional St Austin’s School, chronicling the pupils’ boyish escapades and continuing the world and characters introduced in The Pothunters (1902), Wodehouse’s first published novel. Most of these stories had originally appeared in The Captain or Public School Magazine, where Wodehouse had established St Austin’s as a setting for his early school fiction.
The sole exception is ‘A Shocking Affair’, published here for the first time. Narrated by Frederick Wackerbath Bradshaw, it recounts his elaborate attempt to evade a Thucydides examination by locking himself in the Science Museum and electrifying the door. The plates by Thomas Montague Radclyffe Whitwell (1868–1928), R. Noel Pocock (1878–1949), and Edward Frederick Skinner (1865–1924) had already been used in the magazines.
McIlvaine A3a.
SKU: 2126607
A St Austin's Shocker
WODEHOUSE, P.G. Tales of St. Austin’s. London: Adam & Charles Black. 1903.
8vo. Publisher’s red pictorial cloth and titles in gold to upper board and spine; pp. 281, [1], [2 (advertisements)]; 12 black-and-white plates by T.M. Whitwell, R. Noel Pocock and E.F. Skinner; occasional foxing and offsetting to endpapers and browning to textblock; hinges fragile but holding, otherwise a very good copy; neat gift inscription ‘Reginald C. Bateman | From E.K.T. | & | A.E.T. | September 9th 1916’ to front free endpaper and small bookseller’s ticket of ‘J.N. Curwood … Bromley, Kent’ to rear pastedown.
First edition, first printing of the third novel in Wodehouse’s school series.
This first printing lacks closing quotation marks on the title-page after The Pothunters and A Prefect’s Uncle, and is also printed without a period in ‘St. Austin’s’. The collection brings together twelve short stories and four essays set at the fictional St Austin’s School, chronicling the pupils’ boyish escapades and continuing the world and characters introduced in The Pothunters (1902), Wodehouse’s first published novel. Most of these stories had originally appeared in The Captain or Public School Magazine, where Wodehouse had established St Austin’s as a setting for his early school fiction.
The sole exception is ‘A Shocking Affair’, published here for the first time. Narrated by Frederick Wackerbath Bradshaw, it recounts his elaborate attempt to evade a Thucydides examination by locking himself in the Science Museum and electrifying the door. The plates by Thomas Montague Radclyffe Whitwell (1868–1928), R. Noel Pocock (1878–1949), and Edward Frederick Skinner (1865–1924) had already been used in the magazines.
McIlvaine A3a.
SKU: 2126607
