London: Herbert Jenkins, 1922

8vo, pp. 312, 6pp. advertisements bound in at rear. Original orange boards, lettered and illustrated in brown to front panel and spine. Publisher’s device in brown to rear panel. Lacking the dustwrapper. Boards rubbed and dulled, some staining to front panel and spine, and some closed tears to spine ends. Foxing to endpapers.

First edition. WODEHOUSE’S FATHER’S COPY, WITH HIS OWNERSHIP SIGNATURE TO FRONT FREE ENDPAPER: ‘H[enry]. E[rnest] Wodehouse, 1922 Cheltenham’.

P.G. Wodehouse’s father, Henry Ernest Wodehouse [1845-1929], was a colonial civil servant. Posted to Hong Kong as a magistrate in 1867, he didn’t return to live in England until 1895. P.G. Wodehouse was born in 1881, and Robert McCrum notes in his excellent biography that he saw his parents for barely six months between the ages of three and fifteen, he and his two brothers having been deposited with a nanny in Bath when he was only two years old: ‘The psychological impact of this separation on the future writer lies at the heart of his adult personality. [...] Wodehouse always said he loved his father, but his extraordinary childhood had left its mark on his emotions.’ (Robert McCrum, Wodehouse: A Life, Viking, 2004).

A wonderful, and poignant, association.