Meet Mr Mulliner: Summary & Reading Guide

The Anglers’ Rest opens its family archive

Meet Mr Mulliner introduces one of Wodehouse’s most elastic storytelling arrangements. A speaker at the Anglers’ Rest hears a remark and discovers that a member of his very extensive family once met a relevant predicament. Mr Mulliner has the calm assurance of a man for whom no subject is too obscure and no relation too remote. The listeners may have asked for a brief observation; the reader is rewarded with an entire tale. Nine stories establish the rhythm, but a bibliographic detail matters: all are narrated by Mr Mulliner, while “Honeysuckle Cottage” is not told from his usual corner of the bar-parlour. That one had been recast as a Mulliner story for the book.

“The Truth about George” and “A Slice of Life” begin the volume’s parade of personalities. “Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo” introduces the extraordinary tonic associated with the family, while “The Bishop’s Move” shows how naturally Wodehouse can place ecclesiastical respectability alongside comic upheaval. “Came the Dawn,” “The Story of William,” “Portrait of a Disciplinarian” and “The Romance of a Bulb-Squeezer” bring other relations and difficulties into range. “Honeysuckle Cottage” closes the set with a particularly memorable literary setting. These are separate stories, not successive chapters in the life of one protagonist. The family connection is an invitation to listen, and Mr Mulliner can always find a branch of the tree to suit a new subject.

The pub frame is a lovely social invention. A customer’s comment need not contain a full theory; it need only set the narrator in motion. The Anglers’ Rest gives the tales an everyday point of departure from which increasingly improbable events can unfold. Mr Mulliner’s voice is assured without needing to prove every genealogical link. The family becomes a comic licence to enter many walks of life, from young romance to church circles to writing. I like the implied relationship between storyteller and audience. A listener could object, change the topic or leave, but the story’s momentum makes resistance difficult. The reader, unlike the people at the bar, can choose when to pour another round.

The first UK book appeared from Herbert Jenkins on 27 September 1927, and Doubleday, Doran published the US book on 2 March 1928. The nine stories had appeared in magazines in 1925–27, sometimes in slightly different versions. “The Story of William,” for example, bore the magazine title “It Was Only a Fire” in America. “Honeysuckle Cottage” is especially significant for textual history: the earlier story was rewritten to make it part of the Mulliner family world, and it lacks the standard Anglers’ Rest framing. A collector should distinguish the early periodical tale from the book’s family version. A casual reader can simply enjoy the collection while knowing why its final item sounds a little different.

This is the first of the three principal Mr Mulliner collections in this library, followed by Mr Mulliner Speaking and Mulliner Nights. His tales also appear elsewhere. That wider distribution makes a three-book reading path useful without presenting it as a closed canon. The series is held together by the narrator’s manner and the extravagant reach of his kinship claims, rather than by a single hero ageing through a continuous plot. If you like one relative, you may meet that person again; if not, another kind of Mulliner is likely to appear soon. Wodehouse uses the clan to keep the form renewable.

The specialist annotations repay a return visit. They identify publication variants and unpack period references that a twenty-first-century reader may otherwise glide past. They also show how Wodehouse’s stock of turns and allusions moves across series. Those cross-references need not turn the first encounter into homework. I prefer to read a story for its pace and then consult a note when a joke seems to depend on a vanished custom or an unfamiliar phrase. The comedy usually makes its essential stakes clear through action. The notes add texture and let a fan see the story’s place in a larger practice of writing and rewriting.

A newcomer might choose “Mulliner’s Buck-U-Uppo” for its audacious premise or “Honeysuckle Cottage” for its play with the conventions of fiction. I would then go back and read from the beginning to hear how the frame is established. Mr Mulliner’s certainty is part of the pleasure, but so is the way each tale becomes its own miniature world. A collection page should give the individual titles space, with links to their records, so readers can remember which episode they loved without searching one long undifferentiated family history. Nine stories give a good measure of the range without exhausting the idea.

What I admire is the effortless permission the narrator gives Wodehouse to change subject. A Wodehouse book can be set at a country house, on a golf course or among actors; this single bar-parlour can send us to all sorts of places. The stories are comic performances rather than formal case studies. Their family connection may be wonderfully elastic, but the feeling of being told a tale is precise. Meet Mr Mulliner is a fine start for readers who enjoy short fiction with a distinctive host. Once the host has established himself, the next two collections can range still farther, secure in the knowledge that somebody at the Anglers’ Rest will always provide him with an opening.