In the following essay, Voorhees recounts the long and successful career of Wodehouse and his most popular creations, the characters of Jeeves and Bertie.

The cynical and witty W. Somerset Maugham once remarked that to be a grand old man of letters it was necessary to do two things: write a great many books and live a very long life. By Maugham's law, P. G. Wodehouse (1881-1975) was a grand old man of English letters, for he published about a hundred books and lived to be nearly ninety-four. The fact is that Wodehouse was obviously one of the masters of English comedy when he was still in his thirties.

Beside Wodehouse, many British and American comic writers who flourished between World War I and World War II now look like figures in a museum or an old scrap book. The "brittle" sophistication of Noel Coward has cracks...