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A Few Quick Ones

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A Few Quick Ones
First UK Edition
AuthorP.G. Wodehouse
LanguageEnglish
Genreshort stories
Published13 April 1959 by Simon & Schuster in the US and 26 June 1959 by Herbert Jenkins in the UK

A Few Quick Ones is a collection of ten short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. It was first published in the United States on 13 April 1959 by Simon & Schuster, New York, and in the United Kingdom on 26 June 1959 by Herbert Jenkins, London.[1]

All the stories in the collection feature recurring Wodehouse characters and themes: four Drones Club members (two Freddie Widgeon and two Bingo Little), two golf stories (with the Oldest Member), two Mr Mulliner, one Jeeves and Bertie Wooster, and one Ukridge.

Contents

  1. "The Fat of the Land" (Drone Freddie Widgeon)
    • US; This Week, 2 November 1958 (a shorter and somewhat altered version)
  2. "Scratch Man" (Oldest Member golf)
    • US: Saturday Evening Post, 20 January 1940 (as "Tee for Two") (with American setting and names; mostly followed in American edition of book)
    • UK: Strand, September 1940 (as "Tee for Two") (with British setting and names; mostly followed in British edition of book)
  3. "The Right Approach" (Mr Mulliner)
    • UK: Lilliput, September 1958 (without the Angler's Rest introduction)
    • US: Playboy, January 1959 (rewritten and condensed, with changes to character names)
  4. "Jeeves Makes an Omelette"
  5. "The Word in Season" (Drone Bingo Little)
    • UK: Punch, 21 August 1940
    • US: Harper's Bazaar, 15 September 1940
    • US: This Week, 18 May 1958 (as "Bingo Little's Wild Night Out")
  6. "Big Business" (Mr Mulliner)
    • US: Collier's, 13 December 1952 (without Mulliner framework; hero is Reggie Watson-Watson)
    • UK: Lilliput, March/April 1953 (without Mulliner framework; hero is Reggie Watson-Watson)
  7. "Leave It to Algy" (Drone Bingo Little)
    • US: Blue Book, 1954 (as "The Ordeal of Bingo Little") (an earlier version with significant differences in plot but much reused wording in book version)
    • UK: John Bull, 16 May 1959 (a shorter version whose plot more closely mirrors book version)
  8. "Joy Bells for Walter" (Oldest Member golf) (a simplified reworking of Excelsior from Nothing Serious)
    • US: This Week, 17 October 1956 (as "Keep Your Temper, Walter")
    • UK: John Bull, 16 February 1957 (as "Keep Your Temper, Walter")
  9. "A Tithe for Charity" (Ukridge)
    • US: Playboy, April 1955
  10. "Oofy, Freddie and the Beef Trust" (Drone Freddie Widgeon)
    • First published in the 1949 omnibus Best of Wodehouse,[2] as "Freddie, Oofy and the Beef Trust"

The Ukridge story "A Tithe for Charity" did not appear in the original U.S. edition, which instead featured a 1958 "exclusive" pseudo-Drones story entitled "Unpleasantness at Kozy Kot" (actually a rewritten version[3] of the 1928 Jeeves story "Fixing It for Freddie" collected in Carry On, Jeeves). "Jeeves Makes an Omelette" was a rewritten version of the 1913 Reggie Pepper story "Doing Clarence a Bit of Good", which appeared in the UK collection My Man Jeeves.

See also

References and sources

References
  1. ^ McIlvaine, E., Sherby, L.S. and Heineman, J.H. (1990) P.G. Wodehouse: A comprehensive bibliography and checklist. New York: James H. Heineman, pp. 93-94. ISBN 087008125X
  2. ^ In the Omnibus it is preceded by a page headed "Introducing a new story"
  3. ^ Reggie (2007-07-08). ""Wodehouse stories: Unpleasantness at Kosy Kot" (sic)". Blandings, a Companion to the Works of P. G. Wodehouse. Archived from the original on 2007-07-23.
Sources
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