WODEHOUSE, P.G. The Crime Wave at Blandings.

WODEHOUSE, P.G. The Crime Wave at Blandings. Garden City: Doubleday, Doran & Company. 1937.

8vo. Publisher’s green cloth, lettered and decorated in darker green to spine and upper board, fore-edge untrimmed, illustrated dust-jacket by ‘Roese’ with publisher’s code ‘267–36’ to back panel and ‘1983–37’ to front flap as called for by McIlvaine; pp. [6], 330; closed tear (c. 130 m m) to front flap of dust-jacket, chipping and wear leading to a little loss, one small piece of tape to rear panel wrapping over to verso, and adhesive mark wrapping around head of spine, pushing to spine ends; upper hinge cracked, offsetting and spotting to endpapers, erased inscription to front free endpaper, priced $2.00 with stamp to rear endpaper; good.

First edition, first printing of this collection, bringing together for the first time in a single volume a selection of stories previously serialised in the UK and the US.

Wodehouse’s short-story collection Lord Emsworth and Others was first published in the UK on 19 March 1937. Published three months later, on 25 June, the present collection differs substantially from the UK edition, sharing only three stories: ‘The Crime Wave At Blandings’, ‘Buried Treasure’, and ‘The Masked Troubadour’. All the stories had previously appeared in the US in The Saturday Evening Post between 1932 and 1937, and in the UK in The Strand between May 1926 and December 1936. In the title story, the bumbling Lord Emsworth’s quiet life at Blandings Castle is disrupted by the antics of his niece.

Mcllvaine A58a.

SKU: 2126273