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Blandings - the logo of www.blandings.org.uk, the Companion to the works of P G Wodehouse

The Indiscretions of Archie

A novel

When Archie Moffam marries Lucille Brewster, her father does not approve. For one thing Archie doesn't have a job or any money to support his new wife. There follows a series of adventures in which Archie tries to find a job and get his father-in-law to accept him.

Publishing Information

UK:1921 Herbert Jenkins
1963 Penguin (used here)
US:1923 George H. Doran

Magazine titles

Like many of PG's books, it was first published in magazines as a serial: in the Strand magazine (UK) from March to November 1920 and January to February 1921; and Cosmopolitan (US) from May 1920 to February 1921. The original magazine titles are listed here:

The Man who Married a Hotel
Archie and the Sausage Chappie (US: The Sausage Chappie)
Dear Old Squiffy *
Doing Father a Bit of Good
Paving the way for Mabel
Washy Makes his Presence Felt
A Room at the Hermitage (US: A Bit of All Right)
First Aid for Loony Biddle
Mother's Knee
Strange Experience of an Artist's Model (not US)
The Wigmore Venus

* This episode was also published in Golden Book Magazine (US) in January 1933.

It's possible that four of these serial parts were re-published later in the Cincinnati Enquirer, three with different titles and possibly edited - the web site onlinebooks.library.vpenn.edu/books/cce/ lists their copyright renewals. (The other parts may also have been re-published but, if unchanged, might not have needed renewal.) The parts and editions are:

First Aid for Looney Biddle - 11 January 1925
Growing Boy - 15 February 1925
Mr Connolly, Music Lover - 15 March 1925
Archie, Art Connoisseur - 19 April 1925

The first has the same title as the original magazine appearance, the others hint at the text and might match the earlier magazine parts Washy Makes his Presence Felt, Mother's Knee and The Wigmore Venus respectively. The Growing Boy is the title of Chapter 21 in the book version and a Mr Connolly is affected by music. But without seeing these four editions, this can only be speculation. (It's likely that this was part of a syndicated publication rather than a one-off.)

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In a letter to his step-daughter Leonora (24 Nov 1920, published in Yours, Plum) Wodehouse wrote that he'd been told that short stories don't sell well [in book form] so he was 'hacking the things about'. This explains why the plots jump backwards and forward and the whole seems disjointed. It still reads like a set of short stories or episodes with some up to scratch and some possibly not.

This book is unusual in that there are several references to characters serving in the First World War: most of Wodehouse's books ignore it despite the effect it would have had on so many of the young men he wrote about. PG was in America when war was declared; he volunteered for service but was rejected because of poor eyesight.