WODEHOUSE, P.G. The Swoop!: Or How Clarence Saved England. A Tale of the Great Invasion.

The Invasion of England

WODEHOUSE, P.G. The Swoop!: Or How Clarence Saved England. A Tale of the Great Invasion. London: Alston Rivers. 1909.

8vo. Publisher’s pictorial wrappers printed in black and white against an orange ground, housed in a modern red chemise within a red morocco-backed clamshell box with red cloth sides by the Chelsea Bindery, spine lettered directly in gilt; pp. 126, [2 (advertisements)]; numerous in-text illustrations by C. Harrison; slight soiling to wrappers, short closed tear to lower joint; internally very good.

First edition, first printing of Wodehouse’s satirical novel describing a fictional invasion of Great Britain.

The Swoop! recounts the simultaneous invasion of Great Britain by nine different allied armies (including the Swiss Navy, the Monegasques, and a band of Moroccan brigands under Raisuli). The country is eventually saved through the efforts of Clarence Chugwater, leader of the Boy Scouts. The title alludes to The Swoop of the Vulture, a 1909 novel by James Blyth (pseudonym for Henry James Catling Clabburn, 1864–1933) which describes a surprise attack by the forces of the ‘Imperial German Vulture’. An adapted and abbreviated version, relocated to the United States, appeared in the July and August 1915 issues of Vanity Fair under the title The Military Invasion of America: A Remarkable Tale of the German-Japanese Invasion of 1916. The original story, however, was not published in the US until 1979 (in the collected edition The Swoop! and Other Stories).

Mcllvaine A11a.

SKU: 2126294