London: Herbert Jenkins, 1939

8vo, pp. 311. 3 pp. advertisements bound in at rear. Original red boards, lettered in gilt to spine. illustrated dustwrapper.

First UK edition, published on 25 August 1939; the US edition appeared one week earlier. Serialised in Saturday Evening Post in April/May of that year.

'Uncle Fred was an afterthought, a late-1930s addition to Wodehouse's world, an irrepressible bounder of sixty-something whom Wodehouse saw as 'a sort of elderly Psmith'.... [He] would be one of Wodehouse's most enduring heroes, later starring in Uncle Dynamite (1948), Cocktail Time (1958), and Service With A Smile (1962). But in Uncle Fred in the Springtime, he gets his name in the title, a sure indication of Wodehouse's delight in his company.'

A very nice copy in the scarce dustwrapper.