PG Wodehouse was born in
Guildford in England, in 1881.
His family was the sort of
upper middle class people, who served in the Empire, and spent a lot of time abroad. This
usually meant that their children would be sent home to England at some stage,
to go to school or live with relatives. His father worked as a magistrate in Hong Kong. Pelham was taken to Hong Kong and spent a few
years there but was sent back to England, with his brothers, to live in the
care of a nanny and other relatives. He
saw little of his parents and seems to have never become close to them. Named Pelham Grenville, he was usually called
“Plum”.
He was sent to various schools
in England, and enjoyed some more than others.
His Father intended him for the Navy but his eyesight was too poor for
that. His favourite of his schools was
Dulwich College... He was good at games, enjoyed music and entertainment and
was happy and popular. He was not academic
but was far from stupid.
With his parents living
abroad, he spent holidays with his extended family in the UK, which may have accounted
for the place that domineering and amusing aunts and large families played in
his fiction. He was used to being with
aunts and uncles, rather than with his own parents. He also had a kindly Nanny
as a boy and was accustomed to spend a lot of time with the servants in his families’
homes. This again is reflected in his
books where the servants take an important part in the action... And of course
the most famous servant of all, is Jeeves, the valet and general manservant to
the amiable but idiotic Bertie Wooster.
When he left school his
father had retired and his pension was not enough to allow Plum to go to University,
so he had to take some genteel employment and went into a commercial bank... But he never really enjoyed the life there. He was not a practical young man and found the
work boring and had no interest in getting on there.
He began to write in the evenings,
he produced comic short stories and a school book and generally he did well enough
for him to give up his day job by 1902...
After this, now that he was settled as a full time, he began to think of going to the US. He found the country congenial and made a good
income, writing stories and light journalism.
He also met people in the musical theatre and started to work as a
lyricist
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