In these two characters Wodehouse discovered the perfect expression of his comic talents,” according to Richard J. Two characters among the hundreds developed by Wodehouse are indelibly associated with his name-Bertie Wooster of the Drones Club and Jeeves. “He satisfies the most sophisticated taste and the simplest.” Wodehouse's art is its universality,” Evelyn Waugh once observed. Moreover, although his books suffered io translation, he had readers in virtually every major language. His parodies of life among the British aristocracy and the well‐to‐do, set vaguely in the early years of the reign of King George V, verged on social satire and earned him an American audience that rivaled his British one. These abilities, along with a genius for antic dialogue lifted him into the ranks of the great lumorists. Pelham Grenville Wodehouse had a cultivated aptitude for devising hilarious incidents of controlled incongruity as well as a talent for creating memorable comic characters. Over the years he turned out close to 100 novels, perhaps 500 articles and essays, some 16 plays, as well as screenplays and lyrics for musical comedies. “After I lived in New York we moved out here, and I became a citizen in 1956 over in Riverhead.” “I never did return to England, you know,” Sir Pelham said a few weeks ago, commenting on the knighthood. There were explanations later, and there was even a formal exoneration by the British For eign Secretary, Anthony Eden, in the House of Commons in 1944, but the issue refused to die.
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