Stories

Nine short stories and eleven full length novels, all about Blandings Castle, its seigneur, the ninth Earl of Emsworth, his prize winning pig the Empress and a score of family members and visiting friends and acqaintances. Yes, there may be an occasional crime, but no, no murders, no sex, no improper language, no car crashes, no explicit violence: Pelham Granville Wodehouse has left us a world where the weather is almost invariably sunny, the girls  young and attractive, the young boys obnoxious, the friends always there to be helped in need and the aunts varying in disposition from iron maiden style to joyfully bonhomous.

Characters

Over a hundred characters live within the Blandings Castle stories. Some are regular visitors, some appear only once or in just a few stories, and a number of them are interrelated by family ties or by recurring amorous connections, almost invariably leading to engagements, which are nearly as often broken off as they are made. Actual marriages do however seldom occur in the Blandings Castle world: not suprising because every marriage would lessen the pool of prenuptial candidates, whose amorous complications provide us with an ocean of delightful stories in which to indulge ourselves.