Plum Stones: Summary & Reading Guide

Twelve little doors into the archives

Plum Stones is not one 1993 book containing the twenty-five stories indexed on this page. Galahad Books issued twelve separate specialist booklets between 1993 and 1995, each with its own title and editorial focus. The first, Wodehouse, Detective Writer, and second, Unrepublished Reggie Pepper, arrived in 1993. Subsequent titles explore theatre, Keggs, earlier and later treatments of related material, Bertie’s friends, and school fiction. Treat this page as a map of a booklet series, not as a normal contents leaf from a single volume. That correction changes what a reader should look for at a bookseller.

The first booklet’s detective theme includes “The Strange Disappearance of Mr Buxton-Smythe,” “The Adventure of the Split Infinitive,” “Death at the Excelsior” and “Mr McGee’s Big Day” in Neil Midkiff’s specialist code index. The second gives three Reggie Pepper pieces: “Disentangling Old Percy,” “Concealed Art” and “The Test Case.” Those are wonderfully specific editorial groupings. A fan can choose a booklet for a particular question, rather than buying an imagined giant omnibus. The page’s wider alphabetical story list helps locate titles across the twelve, but it cannot substitute for a volume-by-volume citation when comparing textual variants.

Several booklets turn on Wodehouse’s habit of remaking material. Self-Derivatives Par Excellence and First Drafts announce this interest in their very titles. A familiar premise can be shifted into another character’s mouth, moved to a different setting or pared down for another magazine audience. “Reginald’s Record Knock” belongs to the early cricket history of what became “Archibald’s Benefit” with golf in The Man Upstairs. “Reggie and the Greasy Bird” is an American magazine counterpart connected with the British “The Masked Troubadour.” The booklet sequence offers a way to encounter such relationships without pretending every variant is a brand-new story with no previous life.

Booklet nine, “In That Shape, Rotten,” contains the American “Reggie and the Greasy Bird,” according to Midkiff’s index, and Tony Ring’s introduction explains the changed characters and setting. That is exactly the sort of small, precise editorial apparatus a superfan wants. Booklet eight, Bertie’s Friends, groups material connected with people around his world, while Wrykyn Havoc directs the attention back to early school fiction. These are editorial themes, not twelve instalments of a continuous fictional saga. One can move among them by interest rather than publication order without losing a plot.

The chronology spans 1993, 1994 and 1995; a catalogue that prints 1993 on one aggregate record must explain that it gives the beginning of the series. Galahad was rescuing and comparing material long after Wodehouse’s death. The magazine stories themselves often belong to much earlier decades. A later appearance in Plum Stones does not erase a previous printing in a British or American collection, and an introduction by an editor is not Wodehouse fiction. I would retain a separate note of booklet number and title when citing a piece, especially if a textual contrast is the reason for looking it up.

Begin with the detective booklet if you want an unfamiliar genre, or the Reggie Pepper volume if you are tracing the road to Bertie. Consult the twelve-title list before buying: a seller’s bare “Plum Stones” label could refer to any of several physical booklets. This page serves an umbrella function on the library shelf, linking its represented stories while naming the distinct objects. That is both more useful and more affectionate toward the scholarship that brought the scattered pieces back into reach.