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

Mike at Wrykyn

A Public School novel

Mike Jackson is sent to Wrykyn public school where his ambition is to make the school's cricket first team in his first year. But he has a lot of competition despite his undoubted skills with the bat.

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Publishing Information

Mike at Wrykyn started as the first of two serials published in The Captain, April to September 1907, there titled Jackson Junior. (The second serial was The Lost Lambs, April to September, 1908.) Both were first published as a single book Mike but later separated and published as two books, Mike at Wrykyn and Mike and Psmith.

UK:1909 A & C Black, both serials as Mike
1953 Herbert Jenkins as Mike at Wrykyn
1990 Penguin as Mike at Wrykyn (used here)
US:1910 Macmillan, both serials as Mike
1953 Meredith Press as Mike at Wrykyn with some changes

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Another excursion into the strange world of English public schools. This is essentially a cricketing story which is probably why, as one bookseller suggests, it took so long to be published separately in the US (1935 for the other part). The original US edition is said to contain a brief introduction to cricket for Americans, written by PG himself. If you don't have that version you'll have to make do with my efforts - see This Sporting Life for a few notes on cricket and other English sports.

The 1953 revised version refers to some real cricketers of the fifties, 'Fiery' Fred Trueman, Len Hutton, Jim Laker and Roy Tattersall. This puts the school and our heroes into a curious time warp.