Original versus omnibus
The Jeeves Omnibus, The World of Blandings and The Blandings Omnibus are useful containers, not new novels. They do not increase the original-work count. Their component books retain their own book guides.
Research and glossary
Read the Drones Club slang glossary for what ho, old bean, rummy and more.
This library separates a story or novel from the physical or digital edition that carries it. Where a publication fact has been checked, the book guide names its source and date. Open claims remain labelled.
- Catalogue entry
- One title given a place on these shelves. This is a count of entries in this fan library, not a count of every distinct Wodehouse work or edition.
- Book guide
- A reader’s introduction to one catalogue title, with a link to its series shelf and publication records.
- Work
- The underlying novel, story or editorially distinct collection.
- Shelf
- This site’s main reading group for an entry. A book may also cross into another Wodehouse world.
- Edition
- A particular publisher’s issue, with its own date, format and sometimes a revised text.
- Revised text
- A substantively changed version of a work, rather than an ordinary reprint.
- Collection
- A book assembling shorter pieces. Contents can overlap with another collection.
- Omnibus
- A book binding previously published books or substantial portions together.
- Later compilation
- A later editor’s gathering of earlier writing, identified separately from first publications.
- Buying options
- Links to exact print or audio products, only if they are verified and disclosed. None are active today.
Terry Mordue’s bibliography underpins 92 matched title records and 177 regional first-edition events. Eight archival entries require separate checks. The coverage and chronology report shows what has been counted and what has not. Read the trust and sources policy.
Same Plum, different book?
This is the corner in which a superfan keeps the family tree straight. An original book first gathers a Wodehouse text or story group in that form; an omnibus binds already published books together; a revised text changes the work; and a later compilation may rearrange or duplicate earlier material. Only original or bibliographically distinct volumes receive ordinary shelf status here.
Overlap warning
My Man Jeeves overlaps later revised Jeeves material; Enter Jeeves deliberately gathers the early Jeeves and Reggie Pepper strand again; and The World of Jeeves consolidates story material from the three principal Jeeves collections. A completist buys these for textual or editorial interest, not for wholly new plots.
Revision, not a reprint
Love Among the Chickens was substantially recast for its 1921 edition. Mike was later divided and retitled, while regional versions of The Prince and Betty, A Gentleman of Leisure and Ring for Jeeves require edition-aware reading.
Our counting rule
Reprints and omnibuses are cross-references. A later compilation is counted only when this catalogue deliberately gives that editorial object its own entry—and then labels it as a compilation, never as a newly written Wodehouse book.
Four notorious knots, untied
Love Among the Chickens: 1906 and 1921
The 1906 book introduced Ukridge’s chicken farm. Wodehouse rewrote it extensively for the 1921 Herbert Jenkins edition, altered the narration and removed the original concluding wedding report. Modern editions normally descend from the revision, so “first published 1906” does not by itself identify the text in hand.
Mike, Mike at Wrykyn, Mike and Psmith and Enter Psmith
Mike (1909) is the original two-part novel: Mike Jackson’s Wrykyn cricket career followed by his move to Sedleigh and meeting with Psmith. Later editions split those halves. Mike at Wrykyn is the school-cricket portion; Mike and Psmith is the Sedleigh portion. Enter Psmith is an alternative title used for the Psmith half—not a further adventure.
Reggie Pepper becomes Bertie’s ancestor
Four stories in My Man Jeeves concern Reggie Pepper, an early version of the genial young-man narrator. Wodehouse later refashioned two Pepper stories as Jeeves stories and one as a Mulliner story. Enter Jeeves is valuable because it gathers Reggie Pepper stories beside early Jeeves, but much of its substance is republished rather than newly discovered.
Why Ring for Jeeves has no Bertie
The novel grew from Come On, Jeeves, a play co-written with Guy Bolton. Bertie is away at a school intended to prepare aristocrats for post-war self-sufficiency, leaving Jeeves temporarily with Bill Rowcester. That unusual premise is the design, not an omission; Jeeves returns to Bertie at the close.
Life, letters, theatre and books about Plum
These reference shelves are deliberately outside the 100-entry fiction catalogue, so their presence does not silently change that count.
Autobiography & letters
- Bring on the Girls! (1953), with Guy Bolton
- Performing Flea (1953), letters to William Townend
- Over Seventy (1957)
- Author! Author! (1962), US reworking of autobiographical material
- Yours, Plum (1990), selected letters
- P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters (2011), edited by Sophie Ratcliffe
Plays & musical theatre
The stage shelf runs from early comedies such as A Gentleman of Leisure and The Play’s the Thing to the Princess Theatre collaborations with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern—Oh, Boy!, Leave It to Jane and their companions—and the book/lyric work that feeds into Anything Goes.
Biographies & criticism
- Richard Usborne, Wodehouse at Work to the End
- Frances Donaldson, P. G. Wodehouse (1982)
- Barry Phelps, P. G. Wodehouse: Man and Myth (1992)
- Robert McCrum, Wodehouse: A Life (2004)
- Sophie Ratcliffe, P. G. Wodehouse: A Life in Letters (2011)
- Paul Kent’s critical Pelham Grenville Wodehouse volumes
How to use these shelves
The autobiographies are comic performances as well as evidence; letters show the labour beneath the apparent effortlessness; biographies disagree in emphasis. Start with McCrum for a modern narrative, Ratcliffe for Wodehouse’s own voice and Usborne for the lifelong reader’s close attention to craft.
Posthumous shelves, collaborations and omnibuses
A superfan’s catalogue should tell you what sort of object you are holding, not merely repeat the date on its title page.
Sunset at Blandings
Wodehouse died in 1975 while the novel was unfinished. Chatto & Windus published the surviving text in 1977 with Richard Usborne’s notes and Wodehouse’s working material; Simon & Schuster followed in the US in 1978. The title was chosen by the UK publisher. It is a workshop view, not a completed final novel.
Not George Washington
Published by Cassell in 1907, this semi-autobiographical novel was written with Herbert Westbrook and moves among several narrators. It is not solely a Wodehouse novel.
The Luck Stone
Co-written with Herbert Westbrook and first serialised in Chums in 1908–09 under the name Basil Windham, this school adventure did not appear as a book until Galahad’s limited edition in 1997.
Regional shelf labels
US-only compilations: The Uncollected Wodehouse and Enter Jeeves. UK books without a like-for-like US edition: My Man Jeeves, The Man Upstairs, Lord Emsworth and Others, Mike and several later archival collections.
Later archival and posthumous books
- Sunset at Blandings (1977) — unfinished novel with working notes.
- The Uncollected Wodehouse (1976) and The Eighteen-Carat Kid and Other Stories (1980) — David A. Jasen-edited US collections.
- A Man of Means (1991) — six linked Roland Bleke stories, co-written with C. H. Bovill and first published in magazines in 1914.
- Plum Stones (1993–95) — twelve Galahad booklets containing twenty-five magazine stories, with Tony Ring commentary.
- The Luck Stone, Tales of Wrykyn and Elsewhere and Enter Jeeves (1997) — archival first-book publication or newly assembled early-story collections.
- Kid Brady Stories and A Man of Means (2013; this catalogue records the 2014 US issue) — two early linked sequences gathered together.
Omnibuses — useful containers, listed separately
The Jeeves Omnibus (1931)
The first major Jeeves gathering; not another original adventure.
The Mulliner Omnibus (1935)
Draws together the first three Mulliner collections.
The World of Jeeves (1967)
Wodehouse revised and arranged the Jeeves short-story canon; it overlaps the original collections.
The World of Mr Mulliner (1972)
A broad gathering of the Angler’s Rest narratives.
The World of Blandings (1973)
A Blandings omnibus of already published novels and stories.
Life with Jeeves (1981)
Three full Jeeves novels bound together; convenient, but not a distinct work.
Sources
Reference shelf checked against the Wodehouse Society resources, the estate bibliography and publishers’ bibliographic records; checked 20 September 2026.