Love Among the Chickens

Love Among the Chickens

Front cover and spine of 1st US (1909) edition of Love Among the Chickens
Author	P. G. Wodehouse
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Series	Ukridge
Genre	Comic novel
Publisher	George Newnes
Publication date	June 1906

Love Among the Chickens is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published as a book in the United Kingdom in June 1906 by George Newnes, London, and in the United States by Circle Publishing, New York, on 11 May 1909. It had already appeared there as a serial in Circle magazine between September 1908 and March 1909. The English edition was dedicated "to Sir Bargrave and Lady Deane"; the Rt Hon Sir Henry Bargrave Deane QC was a High Court judge and a cousin of Wodehouse's mother.

In 1921, Wodehouse revised the book. In the 1906 version, the first five chapters were narrated in the third person, before shifting to the first person. The new version was narrated entirely in the first person and had a slightly different ending. The new edition was published in May 1921 by Herbert Jenkins and carried an extended dedication to Wodehouse's old school friend, Bill Townend, in which Wodehouse thanked his friend for the original idea for the story and commented that "...I have practically re-written the book. There was some pretty bad work in it...."

This is the only novel to feature the recurring character Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, whose appearances are otherwise confined to short stories.

This was the first book by Wodehouse to be published separately in the U.S. The four books that had appeared there before had been all printed from imported plates of the UK edition.

The novel is narrated by Jeremy Garnet, an author and old friend of Ukridge. Seeing Ukridge for the first time in years, with a new wife in tow, Garnet finds himself dragged along on holiday to Ukridge's new chicken farm in Dorset. The novel intertwines Garnet's difficult wooing of a girl living nearby with the struggles of the farm, which are exacerbated by Ukridge's bizarre business ideas and methods.

Jeremy Garnet, hearing that his old friend Ukridge has called while he was out, and fearing that the peace he needs to plan his next book is about to be disturbed, decides to leave London for a time. But he is too late. Ukridge arrives, with his wife Millie in tow and immediately starts explaining his new get-rich-quick scheme, involving producing hen's eggs on a farm in Dorset. Giving in to Ukridge's forceful personality, Garnet agrees to accompany him to the farm; there will, Ukridge assures him, be plenty of golf and sea-bathing available. On the train to Dorset, they are joined in a compartment by a pretty, brown-haired girl named Phyllis and her elderly Irish father. By coincidence, Phyllis is reading a copy of Garnet's new novel, given to her by Molly MacEachern.