Edwardian England

In his essay "P. G. Wodehouse: The Lesson of the Young Master," published in the 1958 annual edition of New World Writing, John Aldridge notes that Wodehouse "belongs exclusively to Edwardian times. . . ." Aldridge is referring to the era of England's King Edward VII, who reigned from 1901, until his death in 1910. This decade marked a remarkably quiet transition from the Nineteenth to the Twentieth Century. At the time, England was one of the most powerful, advanced countries on earth. England was an industrial giant, and the British Empire stretched into Africa and Asia. Certainly, England had problems, including terrible poverty in the wretched slums of the larger cities. But the first decade of the Twentieth Century in England was an idyllic time, especially for the rich, in comparison to the tumult of the following decades. Wodehouse idealized the period; his characters spent evenings at "the club" and weekends...