WODEHOUSE, P.G. The Old Reliable.

Hollywood Through Wodehouse’s Eyes

WODEHOUSE, P.G. The Old Reliable. London: Herbert Jenkins. 1951.

8vo. Publisher’s red-orange cloth, spine and upper board lettered in black, in the unclipped first-issue dust-jacket by Frank Ford; pp. 233, [3]; jacket somewhat rubbed and worn to joints and corners, light wear to spine ends, top-edge slightly dusty, some spotting to top- and fore-edges; light spotting to prelims and endpapers; a very good copy.

First edition, first printing of Wodehouse’s comic novel set in a Hollywood mansion.

In The Old Reliable, trouble ensues when the brother of the movie star Adela Cork attempts to steal her scandalous diary, hoping to profit from its secrets about her fellow actors. The plot developed from Spring Fever (1948), with the setting transferred from an English country house to the glamour of Hollywood.

Following the delayed publication of Spring Fever, amid the controversy surrounding his wartime broadcasts from Berlin, Wodehouse adapted the novel for the stage as a play intended for Edward Everett Horton, reshaping the material for an American audience. Horton’s other commitments prevented the play from being produced, and Wodehouse continued to revise it through several drafts before ultimately reworking its premise and characters into The Old Reliable.

Despite Wodehouse’s rewriting of the material with an American audience in mind, the UK edition was published nine months before the US, which was released in May 1951.

McIlvaine A71a.

SKU: 2126289