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

Love Among the Chickens

An Ukridge novel

Ukridge persuades his friend Jerry Garnet to help him run a chicken farm in Dorset, but neither have any idea how to do it. Jerry falls in love with Phyllis, a neighbour, but thanks to Ukridge, falls out with her father. Jerry resorts to desperate measures which seem to backfire.

Publishing Information

UK:1906 George Newnes *
1921 Revised edition Herbert Jenkins (used here)
US:1909 Circle Publishing Co. *

The earlier version had the sub-title A Story of the Haps and Mishaps On an English Chicken Farm.

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The 1921 edition was substantially revised but is still the same book. In the dedication, PG refers to the first version as having 'some pretty bad work in it' [see below]. The inference is if you have the luxury of choice, and this was a hard title to find until a recent edition, the later version is closer to what Wodehouse intended. I've never liked Ukridge as a character so my view is somewhat biased - but I'm not surprised this book is rarely published.

The 1909 US edition is available on-line (NB: it is still under copyright in many countries including the UK) and is presumably the same as the 1906, or very close. The main differences to the 1921 version are: it starts in the third person before switching to the first person at chapter 6, without reason; the beginning is slightly different (its omission later is a bonus); Lyme Regis is not 'disguised' as Combe Regis; and it has a very strange ending, also dropped with good reason.

Although Ukridge is married to Millicent here, she is not mentioned in later stories except in the short Ukridge Rounds a Nasty Corner in which they are secretly engaged. That story was published after this book. PG said in a letter to his old friend Bill Townend that he had wanted to write two stories telling how they got married but couldn't think of a plot. It was Townend that gave PG the plot for 'Chickens'.

* These early editions command high prices. One, claimed to be a unique edition published by George Bell & Son for the colonies, was (in 2006) on sale for US$20,000 (then about £11,000), the highest I've seen for any Wodehouse book.