Book Review by George Simmers: Psmith in the City is maybe P.G. Wodehouse’s most autobiographical novel, in that he was in the same predicament as its hero. In 1900, at the age of nineteen, he learned that because his father’s pension was paid in rupees, and the rupee had collapsed, there was not enough money … Continue reading
Tagged with comic fiction …
The Luck of the Bodkins (1935) by P.G. Wodehouse
Book Review by George Simmers: July was Herbert Jenkins month at the Sheffield Hallam 1900-1950 Reading Group, and so I gave myself a treat by reading a Wodehouse. Before 1918 P.G. Wodehouse had a variety of British publishers, but in 1918 Picadilly Jim was taken on by Herbert Jenkins, and Wodehouse liked the way that … Continue reading
Crewe Train (1926) by Rose Macaulay (another review)
Book review by Sylvia D: This novel has the most wonderful dedication: ‘To the Philistines, The Barbarians, The Unsociables and those who do not care to take any trouble’. This immediately appealed to the rebel in me and although Denham Dobie (named after her mother’s favourite village in Buckinghamshire) is one of the most odd … Continue reading
Crewe Train (1926) by Rose Macaulay
Book review by Frances S: ‘We have some very bright evenings. There’s a nice reading circle, too.’‘A what?’ Denham was apprehensive.‘A reading circle. You all study some book together, and meet and talk about it’‘What for?’‘What funny questions you do ask, to be sure.’ Crewe Train (apparently a reference to the 19th century music hall … Continue reading
Family Roundabout (1948) by Richmal Crompton
Book Review by Kathryn R: This novel was written by the author of the ‘Just William’ stories. It appears that Crompton was the author of around 40 novels for adults. It is set in the interwar years and is the story of two families, both headed by a widow. The Willoughbys are ‘new money’, the … Continue reading
Of Love and Hunger (1942) by Julian Maclaren-Ross
This 1942 novel by J. Maclaren-Ross draws extensively on the author’s experience as a vacuum-cleaner salesman before the war. It is the story of Fanshawe, a man living a precarious debt-ridden life, just about surviving by doing a job he despises.
Trooper to the Southern Cross (1934) by Angela Thirkell
Book review by George S: Trooper to the Southern Cross is a novel by Angela Thirkell, first published in 1934 under the pseudonym of ‘Leslie Parker’. She had married George Thirkell (her second husband and an Australian) in 1918, and in 1920 traveled with him and their children to Australia on a troopship. This book … Continue reading
Lords and Masters (1936) by A.G. Macdonell
Book Review by George S.: A. G. Macdonell is best known for his comic novel, England, Their England. Lords and Masters is a comic novel, too, but the humour is much blacker, tinged by despair at the international situation during the 1930s. The novel centres on a wealthy Kensington family. James Hanson is a self-made … Continue reading
Death Goes on Skis by Nancy Spain (1949)
The writer, journalist and broadcaster, Nancy Spain, published several comic detective stories between 1945 and 1952, of which this is the fourth. It features her two recurring, (extremely) amateur detectives, Natasha Nevkorina, a Russian ex-ballet dancer, and Miriam Birdseye, a revue artist soon to star in a show called Absolutely the End. Natasha is lovely … Continue reading
Pomfret Towers (1938) by Angela Thirkell
This is a comic novel about a group of families in Barsetshire – the imaginary county that Angela Thirkell took over from Anthony Trollope. Much of it happens during an eventful weekend party at Pomfret Towers, home of Lord Pomfret, whose rudeness is a constant source of embarrassment to others and delight for the reader. … Continue reading
Reading 1900-1950 