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

The Coming of Bill

Their Mutual Child (U.S.)

A novel

Kirk Winfield and Ruth Bannister get married and in due course produce a son, William. All is well until Kirk returns from a failed venture in Colombia to find Ruth under the influence of her aunt Lora Delane Porter. Lora has extreme views on the hygienic raising of children.

Publishing Information

UK:1920 Herbert Jenkins
1996 Vintage (used here)
US:1919 Boni & Liveright as Their Mutual Child

First published in magazine form as The White Hope in May 1914 in Munsey's Magazine (US).

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Try as I might, I cannot feel any sympathy for the main characters. I'm not even sure what the book is about. It's been described as a satire on eugenics but post-WW2 it's lost any power in that direction - we've all seen where ideas of racial purity can lead. Without that edge it's not a comedy and it's not a romance but remains a bit of a puzzle. Nor is it helped by covering a 3 - 4 year period, with large jumps in time, or the sparcity of Wodehouse 'touches'.

According to PG's biographer Frances Donaldson, this is one of the books where the plot was supplied by the editor of Munsey's magazine when Wodehouse was short of one. At this time PG was heavily involved with the theatre so presumably did not have time to develop his own.