P G Wodehouse

The Coming of Bill P G Wodehouse

Publisher Marketing: A Pawn of Fate Mrs. Lora Delane Porter dismissed the hireling who had brought her automobile around from the garage and seated herself at the wheel. It was her habit to refresh her mind and improve her health by a daily drive between the hours of two and four in the afternoon. The world knows little of its greatest women, and it is possible that Mrs. Porter's name is not familiar to you. If this is the case, I am pained, but not surprised. It happens only too often that the uplifter of the public mind is baulked by a disinclination on the part of the public mind to meet him or her half-way. The uplifter does his share. He produces the uplifting book. But the public, instead of standing still to be uplifted, wanders off to browse on coloured supplements and magazine stories. If you are ignorant of Lora Delane Porter's books that is your affair. Perhaps you are more to be pitied than censured. Nature probably gave you the wrong shape of forehead. Mrs. Porter herself would have put it down to some atavistic tendency or pre-natal influence. She put most things down to that. She blamed nearly all the defects of the modern world, from weak intellects to in-growing toe-nails, on long-dead ladies and gentlemen who, safe in the family vault, imagined that they had established their alibi. She subpoenaed grandfathers and even great-grandfathers to give evidence to show that the reason Twentieth-Century Willie squinted or had to spend his winters in Arizona was their own shocking health 'way back in the days beyond recall. Mrs. Porter's mind worked backward and forward. She had one eye on the past, the other on the future. If she was strong on heredity, she was stronger on the future of the race. Most of her published works dealt with this subject. A careful perusal of them would have enabled the rising generation to select its ideal wife or husband with perfect ease, and, in the event of Heaven blessing the union, her little volume, entitled "The Hygienic Care of the Baby," which was all about germs and how to avoid them, would have insured the continuance of the direct succession. Review Citations: Library Journal 04/15/2006 pg. 126 (EAN 9781585677443, Hardcover) Contributor Bio:  Wodehouse, P G Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (P. G. Wodehouse) was an English humorist and writer best known for his Jeeves and Blandings Castle novels. Educated at boarding schools, Wodehouse turned to writing at a young age, demonstrating great skill at humorous sketches and musical lyrics. He continued to write part-time while pursuing, at the behest of his father, a career in banking, and successfully contributed numerous pieces to Punch, Vanity Fair, and The Daily Express, among other publications. In addition to his literary work, Wodehouse was incorporated into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in recognition of his collaboration with Cole Porter on Anything Goes, his lyrics to the song "Bill" from Show Boat, and his work on the musicals Rosalie and The Three Musketeers. While interned along with other British citizens in Germany during the Second World War, Wodehouse made a series of radio broadcasts for which he was accused of being a collaborator; and, although later cleared of the charges, he never returned to England. His work has influenced many other writers including Evelyn Waugh, Rudyard Kipling, J. K. Rowling, and John Le Carr?. P. G. Wodehouse died in 1975 at the age of 93.