Something New

Something New – P. G. Wodehouse – In this classic satire of English gentry and their servants, romantic intrigue collides with the hunt for a stolen artifact at a lord's country house.

When struggling author Ashe Marson and former chorus girl Joan Valentine decide to make a fresh start of their lives, they don't expect to meet again at Blandings Castle—each under an assumed identity, hoping to find a priceless stolen scarab. Posing as servants to various guests, they decide to team up rather than compete. But their covert search is child's play compared to the complicated etiquette of a lord's domestic staff, let alone the intricate intrigues of the families they serve.

With the earl's son Freddie engaged to the daughter of an American millionaire, a fixer has been hired to recover compromising love letters Freddie once sent to a chorus girl named Joan. But Freddie's soon-to-be father-in-law has an embarrassing secret of his own: he accidentally pocketed one of the earl's prized scarabs while on a tour of the house. The ensuing ruckus will shuffle the fates and fortunes of all involved before two lovers may unite in this uproarious comedy of manners by the beloved master of British farce.

Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, was an English author and one of the most widely read humorists of the 20th century. Born in Guildford, the son of a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, Wodehouse spent happy teenage years at Dulwich College, to which he remained devoted all his life. After leaving school he was employed by a bank but disliked the work and turned to writing in his spare time. His early novels were mostly school stories, but he later switched to comic fiction, creating several regular characters who became familiar to the public over the years. They include the feather-brained Bertie Wooster and his sagacious valet, Jeeves; the immaculate and loquacious Psmith; the feeble-minded Lord Emsworth and the Blandings Castle set; the loquacious Oldest Member, with stories about golf; and the equally loquacious Mr Mulliner, with tall tales on subjects ranging from bibulous bishops to megalomaniac movie moguls.

Although most of Wodehouse's fiction is set in England, he spent much of his life in the US and used New York and Hollywood as settings for some of his novels and short stories. During and after the First World War, together with Guy Bolton and Jerome Kern, he wrote a series of Broadway musical comedies that were an important part of the development of the American musical. He began the 1930s writing for MGM in Hollywood. In a 1931 interview, his naïve revelations of incompetence and extravagance at Hollywood studios caused a furore. In the same decade, his literary career reached a new peak.