Introduction by Auberon Waugh ¹
Poet's Corner ²
Introduction to The Parrot by France Donaldson ¹
The Parrot ³
Good Gnus
4
Audience at the Court Theatre
5
Mr Beerbohm Tree
5
Ubique
5
Back to His Native Strand
The Outcast
Missed!
6
The Umpire
The Cricketer in Winter
MCC
All about the Aerial Derby
A Solitary Triumph
Mixed Hockey
His Subject
The Rhyme of the Sitter-Out
My Forte
A Bridge Tragedy
The Rivals: A Tale of the Smart Set
7
Thoughts on a Recent Wooing
The Phalanx
The Pessimist
The Ballade of August
A Useless Example
The Ballad of Success
The Millennium
Printer's Error
8
1. Auberon Waugh 1988 and Frances Donaldson 1982 respectively, the latter from
P. G. Wodehouse: the Authorized Biography. Poems © the Estate of P G Wodehouse.
2. An edited extract from
Over Seventy.
3. A series of poems written for the
Daily Express between September and December 1903; only a few are included here.
4. From the short story
The Unpleasantness at Bludleigh Court.
5. Also published in
The Theatre Omnibus.
6. Also published in
What Ho! The Best of P. G. Wodehouse.
7. An item with this title was published in
Novel magazine in 1905.
8. Previously published in
Plum Pie.
A slim volume but none the worse for that. I, for one, can only absorb poetry in small doses, whoever wrote it.
The majority of the poems are from the 1900s - to say that they are dated would be an understatement - the one about the Aerial Derby concerns not airplanes but balloons!
