P. G. Wodehouse was born in Guildford, the suburb of London to which Dickens retired Mr. Pickwick, and educated at Dulwich College, one of England's best public schools. After graduating, Wodehouse worked briefly in a bank and then turned to full-time writing. In 1914 he married Ethel Rowley, and thereafter the Wodehouses lived mostly in the United States and England, though they also had a house in France, at Le Touquet. Between World War I and World War II, Wodehouse was by far the most prolific and popular writer of fiction in the English-speaking world. In America, I Like You (1956) he says that he has already written "ten books for boys, one book for children, forty-three novels, if you can call them novels, three hundred and fifteen short stories, four hundred and eleven articles, and a thing called The Swoop."

Wodehouse arrived at a turning point in his career...