The Swoop!
First edition
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| Author | P. G. Wodehouse |
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| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Genre | Satire |
| Publisher | Alston Rivers Ltd |
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Publication date
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April 16, 1909 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
The Swoop!, or How Clarence Saved England is a short comic novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom by Alston Rivers Ltd, London, on April 16, 1909. Its subtitle is A Tale of the Great Invasion.
An adapted and much abbreviated version, set in the United States, appeared in the July and August 1915 issues of Vanity Fair under the title The Military Invasion of America and with the subtitle A Remarkable Tale of the German-Japanese Invasion of 1916.
The original story was not published in the United States until 1979, four years after Wodehouse's death, when it was included in the collection The Swoop! and Other Stories.
The Swoop! tells of the simultaneous invasion of England by several armies — "England was not merely beneath the heel of the invader. It was beneath the heels of nine invaders. There was barely standing-room." — and features references to many well-known figures of the day, among them the politician Herbert Gladstone, novelist Edgar Wallace, actor-managers Seymour Hicks and George Edwardes, and boxer Bob Fitzsimmons.
The invaders are the Russians under Grand Duke Vodkakoff, the Germans under Prince Otto of Saxe-Pfennig – the reigning British monarch of the day was Edward VII of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha — the Swiss Navy, the Monegasques, a band of Moroccan brigands under Raisuli, the Young Turks, the Mad Mullah from Somalialand, the Chinese under Prince Ping Pong Pang, and the Bollygollans in war canoes.
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Wikipedia