The Inimitable Jeeves
First edition dust-jacket
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| Author | P. G. Wodehouse |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Herbert Jenkins |
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Publication date
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17 May 1923 |
| Media type | Print (Hardback) |
| OCLC | 3601985 |
The Inimitable Jeeves is a semi-novel collecting Jeeves stories by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins, London, on 17 May 1923 and in the United States by George H. Doran, New York, on 28 September 1923, under the title Jeeves.
The novel combined 11 previously published stories, of which the first six and the last were split in two, to make a book of 18 chapters. It is now often printed in 11 chapters, mirroring the original stories.
All the stories had previously appeared in The Strand Magazine in the UK, between December 1921 and November 1922, except for one, "Jeeves and the Chump Cyril", which had appeared in the Strand in August 1918. That story had appeared in the Saturday Evening Post (US) in June 1918. All the other stories appeared in Cosmopolitan in the US between December 1921 and December 1922.
This was the second collection of Jeeves stories, after My Man Jeeves (1919); the next collection would be Carry on, Jeeves, in 1925.
All of the short stories are connected and most of them involve Bertie's friend Bingo Little, who is always falling in love.
The original story titles and publication dates were as follows (with split chapter titles in parentheses):
Richard "Bingo" Little falls in love with the daughter of a left-wing politician, Charlotte Corday Rowbotham. Trying to get close to her, Bingo joins a group called the Heralds of the Red Dawn, whose aims are to "massacre the bourgeoisie, sack Park Lane and disembowel the hereditary ". Trying to impress the group, Bingo harasses his uncle, a peer, and Bertie near Speakers' Corner. They do not recognize him because he is disguised by a beard. The next day Bertie meets Bingo and they create a scheme for Bingo to afford a wedding. The story ends with a raucous dinner including Rowbotham, Bingo and Berty, which highlights class conflict.
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