Book Review: Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse


Piccadilly Jim by P. G. Wodehouse

It has occasionally been noted that P. G. Wodehouse's novels, including even his much later ones, all seem to be set in the bucolic 1920's. I would add to that the observation that Piccadilly Jim, a book first serialized in the Saturday Evening Post in 1916 during the first World War and subsequently published in the U.S. in 1917 and in the U.K. in 1918, already seems to anticipate the impossibly carefree attitude of the 1920's rather than the harsh realities of its own time.

The several transatlantic crossings in the story are presented with no topical mention of either the Titanic which famously struck an iceberg in 1912 or of the Lusitania which was sunk by a German U-Boat in 1915. In fact, the most serious problem alluded to regarding crossing the Atlantic is, as you might guess, sea-sickness.

In the middle of World War I, Wodehouse has already invented his own benign world mostly untroubled by war and other serious calamities. The sole reference to war here, in fact, is a newly-invented but farcically-untested explosive which various unnamed and unscrupulous governments may be interested in illicitly acquiring even without knowing if it actually works.

The 1920's were doubtless a boon to Wodehouse's delightful writing, but I think he may have been well on his way to inventing them before they just happened to come along.