Bertie in trouble

The opening colour (sort of) spread of The Strand December 1927 issue. A new Jeeves story by P G Wodehouse would have been worth holding back for the Christmas number. In the illustration it looks like Berie Wooster's been nabbed by The Hood from Thunderbirds.

Jeeves and Wooster in The Strand

The Inferiority Complex of Old Sippy in the April, 1926 edition. The illustration is by Charles Crombie.

Daily Quota

"He, too, had been an author, and he understood. It is not the being paid money that jars the sensitive author: it is the having to work."

P G Wodehouse, in Best Seller

Awful Gladness

Isn't this lovely? It's an opening spread for a P G Wodehouse story in the May, 1925, edition of The Strand Magazine.

There's something evocative about seeing these Wodehouse stories in their contemporary setting, presented to readers who would have lived in - or would at least have been familiar with - the world these stories portray; of country houses, and butlers and chaps about town for whom finding he has the wrong suitcase and will be unable to dress for dinner in his fiance's parent's home is a serious embarrassment. In other words, this is the real thing - not a TV adaptation made by people doing their best to get the period feel right.

Wodehouse made many appearances in The Strand. It's surprising to find Jeeves introduced way back in the 'teens. He and Wooster weren't products of the 20s/30s at all.

I'm slowly making my way through The Strands of the 1920s and 30s (and indeed 40s). I'll post any other gems - or at least things I think are gems - as I find them.