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

Ring for Jeeves

The Return of Jeeves (U.S.)

A Jeeves novel

An English Earl accused of welshing, a gentleman's gentleman acting as a common bookie's clerk, a big game hunter who's a little afraid, a born-again-and-again millionairess with a passion for ghosts, a knight who works days in a department store and a garden at the bottom of the river. And it all makes perfect sense ... eventually.

Publishing Information

UK:1953 Herbert Jenkins
1999 Penguin (used here)
US:1954 Simon & Schuster as The Return of Jeeves *

Also published in Star Weekly (Canada) on 5 September 1953, 16 pages at 39x28cm (looks like a supplement, probably abridged) and in Ladies Home Journal (US), April 1954 in greatly abridged form (27 pages?).

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* The plot is the same but Chapter 1 in Ring is moved to Chapter 5 in Return and Bill retains the title Lord Towcester from the stage play (changed to Rowcester for the UK version). There are a few minor differences in the text.

This story does not contain Bertie Wooster. Jeeves is on loan as a butler while Mr Wooster is away at school, learning to fend for himself. But as his new employer seems cast in the same mould as Bertie there's plenty of room for Jeeves to exercise his considerable brain power. The book has its origins as a play Come On, Jeeves (produced in Worthing in 1954).

PG takes an opportunity to poke fun at the 'Empire builder' class of men who saw themselves as better than native peoples and contrasting the newly impoverished aristocracy trying to earn an honest living with the newly rich indulging their eccentricities.

Rory: 'I don't get your drift'
Monica: 'I will continue snowing.'