The Eighteen-Carat Kid and Other Stories: Summary & Reading Guide

An earlier Little Nugget beside other rarities

The Eighteen-Carat Kid and Other Stories was issued by Continuum in New York in 1980, after Wodehouse’s death, with an introduction and editorial selection by David A. Jasen. It is a compact gathering of earlier texts, not a newly written 1980 Wodehouse novel. The title piece is especially revealing: The Eighteen-Carat Kid ran in The Captain from January to March 1913 and is an earlier version of The Little Nugget without the later novel’s love interest. A reader who already owns The Little Nugget has a strong reason to look here, but should expect a materially different stage in the story’s development.

The original 1913 serial and the later book do not become two entirely unrelated works because their titles differ. Equally, calling the serial merely a differently titled edition of the novel would erase the structural revision. It helps to think of the 1980 book as an editorial window onto a previous version. The earlier plot’s focus on the child and the predicament surrounding him can be followed without the additional romance of the finished novel. The interesting question is how the expanded narrative changes the balance of motives and relationships. This collection lets a fan compare the route rather than guess at it from a bare bibliography entry.

The other components reach into different early corners. “The Wire-Pullers” is a Joan Romney story from The Strand in 1905. “The Prize Poem” had appeared in a 1901 school magazine and was already collected in Britain in Tales of St. Austin’s. Their presence is another reason to avoid describing every item as newly rescued from a magazine. A posthumous edition can gather work for American readers that already had an earlier British book life. The collection’s value is its particular juxtaposition, not a claim that all the material was wholly unpublished beforehand.

William Tell Told Again is the book’s most conspicuous change of form. Wodehouse’s retelling of the Tell legend had been an illustrated British book in 1904. Its inclusion here republishes the text of a distinct earlier book, without its original poems or illustrations; it is not one more previously uncollected short story. The “Epilogue” closes the selection. The five entries in this library’s contents panel therefore are not five stories of equal length and status: the title serial, two short tales, a reprinted book and a closing piece are very different kinds of object. I want a reader to see that before searching for a copy.

The 1980 American first edition is the bibliographical anchor; a later printing may alter its cover, introduction or descriptive blurb. Research on these early texts is best conducted at the level of each component’s first magazine or book appearance. Terry Mordue’s notes connect the title serial to The Little Nugget, while periodical bibliographies clarify the early school and Joan Romney pieces. A collector should check the physical volume for its editorial apparatus as well as its fiction. The editor’s introduction is part of the appeal for someone who wants to learn why these texts were placed together so long after their first publication.

I would begin with The Eighteen-Carat Kid, then read The Little Nugget while the contrast is fresh. Follow “The Prize Poem” back to the school shelf, and treat William Tell Told Again as the text of an entire earlier book, with the original illustrated edition available as a separate experience. The collection is a fine example of what a late archival volume can offer a superfan: a sequence of comparisons and recoveries, provided we do not blur serial, novel, standalone illustrated book and posthumous editorial compilation into one undifferentiated line of publication dates.