Bachelors Anonymous: Summary & Reading Guide

The society tries to save Ivor Llewellyn from love

Ivor Llewellyn, the film magnate whose marriages have given him reason to be wary of another romance, travels to London under the protection of friends at Bachelors Anonymous. They provide Joe Pickering as a bodyguard and summon Ivor’s lawyer, Ephraim Trout, when actress Vera Dalrymple threatens to draw him into another entanglement. An organization dedicated to keeping men single seems sensible to its members. Wodehouse’s delight is to place it among people whose attractions cannot be managed by committee. I return for the absurdly earnest defensive operation and the way its guardians become vulnerable to the very condition they fear.

Ivor is a returning character from The Luck of the Bodkins and Pearls, Girls and Monty Bodkin, where his Hollywood business helped complicate Monty’s life. Here his own marital history makes him the focus. A reader who remembers his film-world authority will enjoy the reversal: a man who can direct a studio has difficulty directing his private future. There is no need to treat this as a third Monty Bodkin novel. The connection is a person, not a continuation of Monty’s engagement plot. That distinction makes the standalone shelf and a character trail both useful.

Joe Pickering’s assignment sounds practical, but a bodyguard cannot keep an employer from every conversation or feeling. Trout’s arrival adds legal and professional confidence to the mission. He attempts to thwart a romance between Joe and a journalist, even while the society’s own principles may be less robust than he supposes. The comedy works because the protectors believe themselves detached observers. They can see the risks of love in other people’s behaviour, but their analysis becomes less reliable when their own wishes are involved. Wodehouse lets their campaign unfold as a series of interventions with unintended effects.

Vera Dalrymple’s part in the plan cannot be reduced to a warning that actresses are dangerous. She has a purpose and the ability to act upon it, while Ivor’s history makes his fear understandable. A woman journalist involved in Joe’s romance supplies another professional identity that the bachelors’ theories cannot readily accommodate. The organization imagines a world divided into prudent men and romantic hazards; the actual company contains people making more complicated choices. I enjoy how a confident rule for staying safe becomes difficult to apply in the next room.

The UK first edition was published by Barrie & Jenkins on 15 October 1973. Simon and Schuster followed in America on 28 August 1974. Both books use Bachelors Anonymous; there is no alternate US title to create. The specialist bibliography notes Ivor’s earlier Monty appearances and the dedication in the American book. A modern reissue date is a separate edition fact. The publication gap is also a reminder that a work can be known to British readers for nearly a year before its first American book appears.

The title borrows the language of a support group for a condition its members regard as threatening. Wodehouse’s joke is not only that love will defeat them; it is that they have built a whole apparatus of advice, escorting and legal help around an unreliable view of human behaviour. Trout’s attempt to manage Joe’s life makes his own conclusions part of the plot. Ivor’s fear of another marriage gives the apparatus its urgency, but the supposed guardians’ personal stakes ultimately make their confident detachment impossible. The organization is a social machine built to fail amusingly.

Choose Bachelors Anonymous for a late novel about advice that its givers cannot follow. Ivor’s film career connects it to Monty’s books, while this story’s London mission and ensemble are its own. Begin here without homework if you like, then trace Ivor backward to the liner and Hollywood novels. I return for the self-seriousness of the society’s protective arrangements and for the moment a determined bachelor discovers that other people’s romances are much easier to forbid than his own.