P.G. Wodehouse

The Authorized Biography

By: Frances Donaldson

Narrated by: Frederick Davidson

Length: 13 hrs and 44 mins

Publisher's summary

Who has not come to know and love the impeccable Jeeves and the inimitable Bertie? Together with Lord Emsworth, his prize sow the Empress of Blandings, Psmith, and a whole host of redoubtable Wooster aunts, they form a cast of characters, immortalized in print and on screen, whose sharply observed antics are as popular now as when they first appeared in 1919.

But what of their creator, Pelham Greville Wodehouse, whose 93 years produced a volume of work "unsurpassed in the history of literature"? Was he really a traitor to his country who broadcast dangerous propaganda from Germany during the war? And how can this be squared with the immensely lovable figure of "Plum" upon whom the Queen bestowed a knighthood in 1975?

In researching this authorized, definitive biography, Frances Donaldson was given unique access to Wodehouse's most important private papers, including the notebooks he kept during the sad episode of his internment during the Second World War. She also, for the first time, puts his beliefs, his writings, and his actions into the full context of the rest of his life.

Lucidly and evocatively written, yet meticulously detailed, P.G. Wodehouse is a thought-provoking biography of an intriguing and widely misunderstood man. It is the benchmark of biographical writing against which recent literary biographies have had to be measured.

©1982 Frances Donaldson (P)1998 Blackstone Audiobooks

Very focused on wartime broadcasts

Although Wodehouse’s wartime broadcasts were the most significant event of his life and certainly shouldn’t be overlooked, I would have liked more about the times in which he lived. Written by a friend of the family, the book narrates the events of Plum’s life and analyzes his books, but gives no sense of, say, the New York theatre scene of the 1920s.

A wonderful account that helps one to appreciate this gifted creator even more!!!

Wodehouse books are such a perfect diversion to keep ones mind in a sunny place!!

Nicely done, I suppose

Nicely done, I suppose. The book is nicely written but doesn’t grab me. The reading performance was professional and skillful in many ways. But, it constantly irritates me. I recommend the book because I recognize it’s good qualities and because it is the only biography Audible offers on P.G. Wodehouse.

Fascinating biography

Fascinating biography by a friend of Wodehouse's family. It's a bit quirky and idiosyncratic for a biography, but that's what makes it interesting. The narrator's exaggerated vocalizing is more than a little hard to get past, but i pressed through , got used to it and was glad because i enjoyed the book so much.

An Appreciative Official Biography of Plum

What did you love best about P.G. Wodehouse?

Well read, fairly honest in its enthusiasm for Wodehouse, and surprisingly objective when it comes to the troublesome aspects of P.G.'s character and difficult periods of his life. The author was a friend of the family who knew PGW, and was also the daughter and biographer of playwright Frederick Lonsdale. This book makes a nice compliment to Robert McCrum's definitive biography of a few years ago. It does provide some greater detail to Plum's interment during WWII, including some lengthy excerpts of his camp journals, and does provide a longer treatment of this period, perhaps more artfully summarized in McCrum's book.

How would you have changed the story to make it more enjoyable?

There is an almost chronological review of PGW's writing and some commentary on books other than those most currently remembered (the Jeeves and Bertie series and the Blandings Castle stories).

Which character – as performed by Frederick Davidson – was your favorite?

Ms. Donaldson provides an objective, "insiders" view of PGW, and if she is forgiving of his eccentricities, she does deal with them in an objective, if generally sympathetic manner. The unfortunate episode and its aftermath does cast a kind of pall on the book, which is perhaps proportionate to its impact in PGW's life. But overall, Ms. Donaldson conveys the charmed life of a gifted and rightly celebrated writer. Because of the author's obvious affection for her subject, she does take the time and effort to go through the entirety of his career, including his work for the stage which is sometimes given short shrift.

Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?

Like most of the Wodehouse audible releases, the performance is terrific, particularly when reciting excerpts from the Master's work. It was a bit strange at first, to hear a male voice narrating a book authored by a woman, but this worked as well, since there is a lot of recitation from PGW's work and his private correspondences.

very enjoyable

I skipped through some long parts, but really enjoyed it and learned alot about P.G.

Reader is unbearably humorless and pompous

I am a huge PG Wodehouse fan. I read his books over and over, always delighted by his comic writing. Yet I cannot get through more than 10 minutes at a time of this audio biography due to the appalling affect of the reader. Davidson is grating, unlikeable, and off putting. I would greatly prefer a robot reader to this disgraceful performance.

Enjoyable for Wodehouse fans

By the end of the book, I felt I had a sense of Wodehouse’s personality, not merely the facts of his life. The book ends abruptly with his death which felt unsatisfactory as I was curious about his wife’s life afterwards. Maybe I just didn’t want the story to end. I think this book will be most satisfactory to those who have read a good deal of P. G. Wodehouse’s writings and are familiar with English authors. A lot of time was spent on the war time, broadcasts and the aftermath, but that seems appropriate because that episode colored his life forever after. The results of this book will be to whet your appetite for reading and rereading his books.

Disappointing.

This book seems to breeze through the author's youth and beginnings as a writer, and is devoid of the humor found in other Wodehouse biographies. The story first two decades of Wodehouse's life were told so briefly that the book had the feeling of an abridged work. So much so, in fact, that I checked to see if it was an abridged production. (It isn't.)

Overall, I do not recommend.

A Personal Take Rather Than a Scholarly Biography

According to Donaldson, works I esteem (A Gentleman of Leisure) fail to make “the first rank of the novels”; characters I should have shunned (Ukridge) I love; other characters I prize as exemplary effusions of the Master’s genius (Psmith) stand revealed as atypical impediments to Wodehouse’s development. A novel I adore (The Girl on the Boat) is really, “…one of the most unsatisfactory of all…with a slow-moving plot and not very much humor”. It’s embarrassing, like being caught using the fish fork for the entrée. One simply doesn’t know where to look.

But then, this is the work of a biographer who sat down and, it seems from her own testimony, plowed through Wodehouse’s more than 90 books, in order of publication, and then delivered her personal responses to them. A somewhat chatty, anecdotal book, I found very few instances of an insight that unlocked a deeper understanding of the man or his works. For that, you need to go to Robert McCrum's superb biography, Wodehouse: A Life (alas, not on Audible but a great paper-and-ink read).

Donaldson’s position as “authorized” biographer should prepare us for sympathetic treatment of her subject, and she handles the biggest mistake of Wodehouse’s life, the Berlin broadcasts, with even-handed intelligence. But it’s also the only period of his life she treats at length, and with some sense of chronology, giving an overall impression of lopsidedness. However, the scanty, debatable literary analysis remains the largest fly in this ointment. Frederick Davidson, one of my favorite readers of Wodehouse, does his usual superb job.