Description

A transatlantic voyage sets the stage for love and madcap farce in P.G. Wodehouse’s 1929 comic tale Three Men and a Maid. Billie Bennett is a lively young American woman on her way to England. On board with Billie are her fiancé, the intellectual and artistic Eustace Hignett, Billie’s good pal Bream Mortimer, and Sam Marlowe, Eustace’s cousin. Billie gets more than she bargained for as the ship sets sail. Although she is set to marry Eustace, she soon realizes that all three men have feelings for her. Add a rough-and-ready fellow female traveler who just happens to fall head over heels for Eustace, and you have the perfect recipe for confusion of the most amusing Wodehousian sort. Who will end up with whom? As the ship makes its way across the ocean, hearts will be broken and mended in the most interesting and hilarious ways.

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)

Through the curtained windows of the furnished apartment which Mrs. Horace Hignett had rented for her stay in New York rays of golden sunlight peeped in like the foremost spies of some advancing army. It was a fine summer morning. The hands of the Dutch clock in the hall pointed to thirteen minutes ...