SOURCE: “A Reader's Guide to P. G. Wodehouse's America,” in Studies in American Humor, Vol. 7, 1989, pp. 32-44.

In the following essay, Karla explores the “American connection” in Wodehouse's work.

“It probably comes as a shock to most Wodehouse fans to learn that he has spent by far the greater part of his adult life in this country. The picture of Wodehouse that his readers invariably conjure up has him ambling across a crisp sward in Sussex or Shropshire, swinging a knobby walking stick and humming ‘Roses of Picardy.’ They find it almost impossible to picture him living in a room in Greenwich village or, as he did many years later, in a penthouse apartment on Park Avenue” (Wind 48). In 1955, P. G. Wodehouse, British humorist, became an American citizen after several years of a trans-Atlantic relationship with the United States of America. Wodehouse had made several trips to the...