Post by john wolfeFrom what I read about it Richard Usborne's 'Plum Sauce' seems to be
not much more than a revised edition of 'Wodehouse at Work to the End'
(which I own). Am I right?
Most of the content is the same as the out-of-print _The Penguin
Wodehouse Companion_ which incorporates most of _Wodehouse at Work to
the End_, so you'd find a lot of repeated material. I believe the
extended "biographical" sketches of some forty characters may be new to
_Plum Sauce_ but I'm not sure. There are some very nice illustrations,
too, including lots of British first-edition dust jackets, so the newer
volume does have some reason for existing.
Post by john wolfeIs the Donaldson biography really quantite negligeable as I read in a
not very friendly review (dry, blindly pro-Wodehouse)? Which biography
is worth my money?
Donaldson's bio is scarcely "blindly pro-Wodehouse"; I'd say instead
that she shows signs that she doesn't like his writings very much nor
understand the man very well. Had she not been a friend of Plum's
stepdaughter Leonora I doubt if she would have been asked to write the
volume.
Robert McCrum's _Wodehouse: A Life_ is probably now the standard
biography and it's generally excellent, though there are a few spots
where he jumps to an erroneous conclusion. I'm very fond of Barry
Phelps's _P. G. Wodehouse: Man and Myth_, which helps clarify the
difference between Wodehouse the man and the public persona he adopted
after the embarrassments of his wartime experiences. David Jasen's _P.
G. Wodehouse: A Portrait of a Master_ had the benefit of personal talks
with PGW, although some of the stories have been improved in Wodehouse's
re-telling. Benny Green's _P. G. Wodehouse: A Literary Biography_
concentrates on the writings at least as much as the life, and contains
much enjoyable material about Wodehouse's theatrical involvement.
Many other volumes are useful, but these are the ones I return to most
often.
-Neil Midkiff