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BIOGRAPHY
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Wodehouse, Pelham Grenville was born in Guilford, Surrey Great Britain, 15th October 1881. The Creator, just for fun, decided to give to the third Henry Hernest Wodehouse's son as head a pretty bald head with the shape of a plum. And that was "Plum". "Plum" for ever: "Plum" for everyone. The biographers remind that he attended the Dulwich College, the college that he loved and remembered for all his life or,as the english people say, "the tie that binds". But we can't forget that before Dulwich, taking care of his childhood there were: 1. a certain Miss Roper, a woman devoid of any sense of humor, scrupulously, if not fanatically gifted with "the most traditional and sombre virtues...like mania for cleanliness, order and formality"; 2. Two spinsters, Cissie and Florrie very indulgent about the most boring aspects of life, scared of anything amusing or even joyful. Moreover, after the happy experience of Dulwich, Plum started working in a bank. There was enough so that the born humorist, if ever there was one, started, in 1902, to contribute to a humoristic column of the London "Globe". The next year, kissed by success, started to be a writer. In 1909 he publishes "Love among the Chickens", where we meet the first of his unforgettable characters, the frantic Ukridge. It was a immediate, big and unbroken success, the same for almost of his books (90 counting romances and story-books), characters and cycles: starting from the one of Jeeves and Bertram Wooster (1917), the educated and calm butler and Edwardian dandy, weak and not well educated, arriving to the one of Psmith (1909), restless "thousand-jobs" with an exahsperated polished language, to the one of Blandings (1935), theCastle in Shropshire, theater of feats of the very absent-minded Lord Emsworth and of his adorated competition-sow, the empress of Blandings. Beside the main characters, there's a group of "characters", that can not be defined as secondary or minor. It's better to call them "costars": the draming Madeline Basset, who think that every time a fairy shed a tear, a wee bit star is born in the Milky Way, Augustus (Gussie) Fink Nottle, breeder of tritons and salamanders, Sir Galahad, Lord Emsworth's madcap brother and many others. After 1919 he lived prevalently abroad, expecially in Paris or in the United States. There, between Hollywood and New York, after the meeting with Guy Bolton (1915) and Jerome Kern, he will develope his theatral and cinematografic career, which produced 30 comedies and musicals and 20 film scripts. In 1955 he took the american citizenship. He had been appointed Sir in 1975 a short time before his death, in Long Island; the 14th Februar 1975. His wife, Ethel Newton, married in 1914, lived nine years more. |
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