WODEHOUSE, P.G. Uncle Dynamite.

Stolen Identity and Stolen Property

WODEHOUSE, P.G. Uncle Dynamite. New York: Didier. 1948.

8vo. Publisher’s red cloth lettered in silver to spine, with facsimile signature in silver to upper board, illustrated dust-jacket by Hal McIntosh with printed price $2.95 to front flap; pp. [8], 312, with black-and-white illustrations by Hal McIntosh throughout; light sunning to jacket spine, but otherwise crisp and fresh, pushing (with a little wear) to spine ends; near fine.

First US edition, first printing of the second full-length novel to feature Uncle Fred dragging his nephew Pongo into a tangled web of impersonation, stolen property, and romantic entanglements.

The novel was written in February 1945, when Wodehouse was staying at a private medical clinic in France under police surveillance, having been released from custody while still under suspicion of treason and collaboration. He recalls the difficulty of writing there in a letter to William Towenend: ‘I managed to get a hundred pages done while in the clinic, in spite of constant interruptions. I would start writing and get a paragraph done when the nurse would come in and sluice water all over the floor’ (Wodehouse, p. 140).

The novel was first published in the UK on 22 October 1948, and the US publication followed a month later on 29 November 1948. It was later condensed for serialisation in April 1949, for Liberty in the US.

Mcllvaine A68b. See Wodehouse, Performing Flea (1961).

SKU: 2126275