neilmidkiff

[neilmidkiff]

As a convenience to Wodehouse readers, Madame Eulalie now has all five published versions of The Prince and Betty transcribed online. It turns out that Wodehouse's original idea was to wrap a love story (common to all versions, with small variants) around the reused Psmith, Journalist material; that is proved by a letter he wrote to Leslie Bradshaw in January 1911. That version became the American book (Watt, 1912). For British audiences, since the Psmith, Journalist story had already appeared there (though only as a serial in a magazine for schoolboys), he had to swap out the journalism plot and replace it with the more cohesive comedic romance that Rebekah mentions. Links to all five transcriptions are on Madame Eulalie's code index page at https://madameulalie.org/GMcode.html#PAB

Thoughts on any standalone Wodehouse books you may have read?

Piccadilly Jim: My favorite of the standalones I’ve read. I thought it had a very funny plot with some great characters, with some surprisingly sweet moments to the romance. I did lose some interest about ¾ of the way through (the whole criminal subplot made everything just a touch too complicated), which contributed to me wandering away and not finishing it for the better part of a year (though that says more about my distractability than the quality of the book.)

The Pothunters: Does this count as a standalone, or do the school stories count as their own series? Since I haven’t read any other stories with these characters, I’m counting it among the standalones. I remember it being better than I expected, but most of it was forgettable (as evidenced by my forgetting of it).

The Prince and Betty: I liked the musical-comedy-without-the-music aspect of the original part of the story, but I mostly remember and am amused by the bizarre turn into a Psmith, Journalist remake. I do think having Betty as a secretary adds a lot to the Cozy Moments office dynamic and I kind of wish she’d have been in the original.

If I Were You: Goodreads tells me I have read this. I have zero memory of it and that frightens me. Usually if I don’t remember a book, I just don’t remember the contents, but I have no memory of even hearing of this book, much less reading the entire thing. It’s so bizarre that I’m finding more realistic explanations to be 1) I rated this book by mistake or 2) this is an artifact from a rewritten alternate timeline of the universe.