Reggie Pepper

Reginald Pepper, known as "Reggie", is a fictional character who appears in seven short stories by P.G. Wodehouse. He is a young man-about-town with far more money than brain cells (he was left a fortune by his late uncle Edward Pepper, of Pepper, Wells and Co., the colliery people). He is considered to be an early prototype for Bertie Wooster, who, along with his valet Jeeves, is one of Wodehouse's most famous creations.

The Reggie Pepper stories

with their dates of first publication:

• Absent Treatment
  • UK: Strand Magazine, March 1911
  • US: Collier's Weekly, 26 August 1911

• Helping Freddie
  • UK: Strand Magazine, September 1911
  • US: Pictorial Review, March 1912 (as "Lines and Business")

• Disentangling Old Percy
  • UK: Strand Magazine, August 1912
  • US: Collier's Weekly, 30 March 1912 (as "Disentangling Old Duggie")

• Rallying Round Old George
  • UK: Strand Magazine, December 1912
  • US: Collier's Weekly, 27 September 1913 (as "Brother Alfred")

• Doing Clarence A Bit of Good
  • UK: Strand Magazine, May 1913
  • US: Pictorial Review, April 1914 (as "Rallying Round Clarence")

• Concealed Art
  • UK: Strand Magazine, February 1915
  • US: Pictorial Review, July 1915

• The Test Case
  • UK: Pearson's Magazine, December 1915
  • US: Illustrated Sunday Magazine, 12 December 1915

(Source: http://home.earthlink.net/~nmidkiff/pgw/story.html)

The British versions of "Absent Treatment", "Helping Freddie", "Rallying Round Old George" and "Doing Clarence A Bit of Good" were collected along with four early Jeeves stories in My Man Jeeves, published in May 1919 by George Newnes. The American versions of "Absent Treatment", "Brother Alfred" and "Rallying Round Clarence" were collected in the American edition of The Man with Two Left Feet, published in 1933 by A.L. Burt. The British versions of "Disentangling Old Percy", "Concealed Art" and "The Test Case" were published as Plum Stones Volume 2: The Unrepublished Reggie Pepper in 1993 by Galahad Books, a specialist Wodehouse publisher. The American versions of all the stories, along with some early Jeeves stories, were published in Enter Jeeves by Dover Publications in 1997.

The plots of several of these early stories were later re-worked to feature other Wodehouse characters. "Helping Freddie" was rewritten as the Jeeves story "Fixing it for Freddie", published in Carry on, Jeeves in 1925. "Rallying Round Old George" was rewritten as the Mulliner story "George and Alfred", published in Plum Pie in 1966. "Doing Clarence a Bit of Good" was rewritten as the Jeeves story "Jeeves Makes an Omelette", first published in the Toronto Star in 1958 and collected in A Few Quick Ones in 1959.

External links

• Wodehouse's short story "Concealed Art" at The Gentle Reader