The Code of the Woosters: Summary & Reading Guide

A comic machine with every part in motion

The cow-creamer is a marvellous test of a new Wodehouse reader. You need not care about antique silver to care very much about which household has it and what Bertie has been persuaded to do. An object passes from one person's desire to another's obligation; every attempt to put matters right creates a new difficulty. Totleigh Towers gives the story a compact arena, and the familiar cast helps each misunderstanding acquire a history. I return for the timing: an apparently small social embarrassment becomes a much larger emergency almost before Bertie notices the change.

There is a little more accumulated Jeeves world here than in Right Ho, Jeeves. Aunt Dahlia, Gussie, Madeline and Sir Watkyn already carry relationships that seasoned readers will relish. A newcomer can still follow the immediate problem without knowing every prior appearance. If you want the gentlest entrance to a full-length Jeeves book, start with Right Ho, Jeeves; if the premise of a silver cow-creamer and a fierce magistrate sounds irresistible, begin here. I would not read a full account of the ending before you do: the pleasure is watching Jeeves judge exactly how much of his plan to reveal and when.

Roderick Spode is a presence whose bullying should not be softened into harmless eccentricity. Wodehouse makes Bertie's predicament funny through the contrast between the threat he perceives and his own ornate manner of reporting it. The specialist annotations are especially useful after a first reading, when you may want to chase an allusion or compare a passage against another edition. Their page references apply to a stated Penguin text, so a modern edition may place the same line on another page.

The UK and US books appeared on the same date in October 1938 according to Madame Eulalie's bibliographical introduction. The novel also appeared in serial form before the books. Those are publication events, not interchangeable products or a claim that every reprint has identical pagination. The present retailer and audio links below point to individually identified modern listings, with no assertion about stock, price or eligibility in your region. For the larger shelf, use the publication-order guide, then circle back to this one when you want to see just how carefully Wodehouse can tighten the screws.