Product Description

This is a Jeeves and Wooster collection. These marvellous stories introduce us to Jeeves, whose first ever duty is to cure Bertie's raging hangover ('If you would drink this, sir...it is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.') And from that moment, one of the funniest, sharpest and most touching partnerships in English literature never looks back...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #41919 in Books
• Published on: 2008-05-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

From the Back Cover
A Jeeves and Wooster collection

These marvellous stories introduce us to Jeeves, whose first ever duty is to cure Bertie’s raging hangover (‘If you would drink this, sir… it is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.’)

And from that moment, one of the funniest, sharpest and most touching partnerships in English literature never looks back…

About the Author
The author of almost a hundred books and the creator of Jeeves, Blandings Castle, Psmith, Ukridge, Uncle Fred and Mr Mulliner, P.G. Wodehouse was born in 1881 and educated at Dulwich College. After two years with the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank he became a full-time writer, contributing to a variety of periodicals. As well as his novels and short stories, he wrote lyrics for musical comedies, and at one stage had five shows running simultaneously on Broadway. At the age of 93, in the New Year's Honours List of 1975, he received a long-overdue Knighthood, only to die on St Valentine's Day some 45 days later.

Excerpted from Carry On, Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Now, touching this business of old Jeeves – my man, you know – how do we stand? Lots of people think I’m much too dependent on him. My Aunt Agatha, in fact, has even gone so far as to call him my keeper. Well, what I say is: Why not? The man’s a genius. From the collar upwards he stands alone. I gave up trying to run my own affairs within a week of his coming to me. That was about half a dozen years ago, directly after the rather rummy business of Florence Craye, my Uncle Willoughby’s book, and Edwin, the Boy Scout.
The thing really began when I got back to Easeby, my uncle’s place in Shropshire. I was spending a week or so there, as I generally did in the summer; and I had had to break my visit to come back to London to get a new valet. I had found Meadowes, the fellow I had taken to Easeby with me, sneaking my silk socks, a thing no bloke of spirit could stick at any price. It transpiring, moreover, that he had looted a lot of other things here and there about the place, I was reluctantly compelled to hand the misguided blighter the mitten and go to London to ask the registry office to dig up another specimin for my approval. They sent me Jeeves.

I shall always remember the morning he came. It so happened that the night before I had been present at a rather cheery little supper, and I was feeling pretty rocky. On top of this I was trying to read a book Florence Craye had given me. She had been one of the house-party at Easeby, and two or three days before I left we had got engaged. I was due back at the end of the week, and I knew she would expect me to have finished the book by then. You see, she was particularly keen on boosting me up a bit nearer her own plane of intellect. She was a girl with a wonderful profile, but steeped to the gills in serious purpose. I can’t give you a better idea of the way things stood then than by telling you that the book she’d given me to read was called ‘Types of Ethical Theory,’ and that when I opened it at random I struck a page beginning: -

‘The postulate or common understanding involved in speech is certainly co-extensive, in the obligation it carries, with the social organism of which language is the instrument, and the ends of which it is an effort to subserve.’

All perfectly true, no doubt; but not the sort of thing to spring on a lad with a morning head.

I was doing my best to skim through this bright little volume when the bell rang. I crawled off the sofa and opened the door. A kind of darkish sort of respectful Johnnie stood without.

‘I was sent by the agency, sir,’ he said. ‘I was given to understand that you require a valet.’

I’d have preferred an undertaker; but I told him to stagger in, and he floated noiselessly through the doorway like a healing zephyr. That impressed me from the start. Meadowes had had flat feet and used to clump. This fellow didn’t seem to have any feet at all. He just streamed in. He had a grave, sympathetic face, as if he, too, knew what it was to sup with the lads.

‘Excuse me, sir,’ he said gently.

Then he seemed to flicker, and wasn’t there any longer. I heard him moving about in the kitchen, and presently he came back with a glass on a tray.

‘If you would drink this, sir,’ he said, with a kind of bedside manner, rather like the royal doctor shooting the bracer into the sick prince. ‘It is a little preparation of my own invention. It is the Worcester Sauce that gives it its colour. The raw egg makes it nutritious. The red pepper gives it its bite. Gentlemen have told me they have found it extremely invigorating after a late evening.’

I would have clutched at anything that looked like a life-line that morning. I swallowed the stuff. For a moment I felt as if somebody had touched off a bomb inside the old bean and was strolling down my throat with a lighted torch, and then everything seemed to get all right. The sun shone in through the window; birds twittered in the tree-tops; and generally speaking, hope dawned once more.

‘You’re engaged!’ I said, as soon as I could say anything.

I perceived clearly that this cove was one of the world’s workers, the sort no home should be without.

Customer Reviews

Top Hole
This is the book that started it all, the meeting of Bertie and Jeeves and I for one can't be thankful enough that it happened. These characters enrich my life like no one else can. Brilliantly funny and life affirming. Hooray!

Wow! Jarvis is a one man radio drama!
What can I say about P.G. Wodehouse that hasn't been said before. He is one of the most wonderful writers in the English language. Period! QED.

This review is about Martin Jarvis.

Martin Jarvis is a one man acting troupe. His handling of these stories is the best I've ever heard. His Bertie Wooster voice is nothing like his Jeeves voice, which is nothing like his Florence Craye voice, which is nothing like his Lord Worpelston voice, which is nothing like, etc.

Jarvis knows, and handles these stories like they're his old friends, which they may very well be. He has the skill to tell these stories the way they should be told- not missing a single trick.

Wodehouse always said that his stories should be read out loud. These tapes/cds are proof that he was right. They are incredible, thanks to the charm, wit and skill of Martin Jarvis! You'll love them.

Don't we all need a Jeeves?
Or those of us who are constantly tumbling into tricky situations and who therefore require repeated extraction from a variety of snaggles, by our own faithful, gentle and uncritical expert, need a Jeeves. Bertie Wooster is a lucky lucky man and it's little wonder that his friends, rivals and other 'low blighters' sometimes try to steal Jeeves away. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's man - it says so in the rules somewhere, doesn't it? In fairness to Wooster, he doesn't keep his treasure all to himself, but allows his predicament-prone friends to benefit from the problem solving genius of his man. He's such a decent chap. Listen to Martin Jarvis reading these 7 sprightly adventures of Jeeves and Wooster and you'll see what I mean. The 7 stories are:

1) "Jeeves Takes Charge", where Jeeves first enters Bertie's employ and makes himself indispensable almost immediately.
2) "Jeeves & the Unbidden Guest", where Bertie is constrained to accommodate the peculiar son of a friend of his bossy aunt Agatha, in his New York apartment.
3) "The Artistic Career of Corky", where Bertie, still happily exiled in New York, tries to help an artist friend to avoid being sucked into his uncle's jute business.
4) "The Aunt and the Sluggard", where (still yet in New York) Bertie's idle poet friend from Long Island has to be rescued from an energetic aunt.
5) "Clustering Round Young Bingo", where Bertie's aunt Dahlia and friend Bingo swap domestic staff by means of complicated, underhand jiggery-pokery.
6) "Jeeves & the Hard-boiled Egg", where (in New York again) one of Bertie's chum's is under pressure from his uncle and benefactor, the Duke of Chiswick.
7) "The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy", where poor old Biffy has carelessly lost the love of his life because he can't remember either her name or the name of her hotel.

Jeeves is the quiet and unassuming hero who saves Bertie and his pals from calamity every time. It's a box of gems. Martin Jarvis reads them better than well. There are 4 discs in the CD case and the reading time is about 5 hours. Highly recommended!