Description

As a man who has seen his own fair share of life’s ups and downs, Sir James Willoughby Pitt has a great deal of sympathy for his fellow man in this 1909 novel. One day he decides to take pity on a down-on-his-luck gentleman whom he meets in a restaurant. So begins Pitt’s friendship with Spennie Blunt, a ne’er-do-well aristocrat. Not long after meeting Spennie, Pitt encounters a man from his past, Spike Mullins. Pitt and Spike share a common but dark history—one in which both were jewel thieves. While Pitt has reformed, however, Spike still has quite a taste for mischief. When the two men join Spennie at his lavish family estate, not only is Pitt in for more surprises from his past, but he finds his hands full trying to keep the wayward Spike from indulging his larcenous temptations in their luxurious surroundings. Comedy, romance, and crime combine in this hilarious romp through high (and low) society, virtue and vice.

About the Author

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975) was born in Hong Kong to British parents. As a child, he returned to England with his family but spent several lonely years away from home at boarding school. Wodehouse was a passionate writer from early on but was unable to pursue his education at university due to his family's tight budget. Instead, Wodehouse was forced to choose a practical job as a banker, although he did not enjoy a second of it. He left his banking position to write features for British newspapers, and after finding success as a columnist, eventually moved to New York and began writing for American magazines. Wodehouse's talents as a writer brought him into the entertainment industry, where he wrote scripts, screenplays, and lyrics for some of the day's most famous Broadway shows and for early Hollywood films. After beginning to publish his first novels and short stories, Wodehouse settled into a career as an author. His success was followed by difficult times during the Second World War, when, while living in France, Wodehouse was arrested by occupying German forces and imprisoned for a year in a dismal internment camp. After the war, Wodehouse eventually moved back to New York, where he would remain for the rest of his life. Beloved for his entertaining characters and plots, Wodehouse is perhaps best-known as the creator of the Jeeves and Wooster novels, as well as a host of light-hearted and hilarious stories about the comic trials and tribulations of the well-to-do.

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Opening Lines (Experimental)

CHAPTER I.
The supper room of the Savoy Hotel was all brightness and glitter and gayety. But Sir James Willoughby Pitt, baronet, of the United Kingdom, looked round about him through the smoke of his cigarette, and felt moodily that this was a flat world, despite the geographers, and that he was ...