Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best (Penguin Modern Classics) (ISBN 0141185740)

Must-have for Blandings fans:
If you're making your way through the Blandings cycle, this is a book you need to get. It contains all of the Blandings short stories in one handy volume. Until I found this, I was continually searching libraries for out-of-print short story collections to fill in the gaps between novels. If you want to read them in order, here it is: 1915 Something Fresh 1923 Leave it to Psmith 1924 The Custody of the Pumpkin* 1926 Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best* 1927 Pig-Hoo-o-o-o-ey* 1928 Company for Gertrude* Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend* 1929 Summer Lightning 1931 The Go-getter* 1933 Heavy Weather 1936 The Crime Wave at Blandings* 1939 Uncle Fred in the Springtime 1947 Full Moon 1950 Birth of a Salesman* 1952 Pigs Have Wings 1961 Service With a Smile 1965 Galahad at Blandings 1966 Sticky Wicket at Blandings* 1969 A Pelican at Blandings 1977 Sunset at Blandings (posthumous) * Short stories in this collection Enjoy!

9 Blandings short stories:
"I have devoured his work repeatedly and voraciously, not merely because he is a great comic writer, but because I think he is arguably the greatest musician of the English language I have ever encountered. He may not have anything to say about Real Life (he would hoot at the very idea) but art practised at that level doesn't have to be *about* anything..." - Douglas Adams, quoted in Muir's introduction Only the first 6 Blandings stories in this collection can be found in BLANDINGS CASTLE. (For those unfamiliar with the Earl of Emsworth, there are also several Blandings novels, starting with SOMETHING FRESH). In the introduction, Muir, who knew Plum (if I may call him so), draws a few comparisons between Plum and Lord Emsworth: both men's lives were run by strong women (Ethel Wodehouse in one case, Emsworth's sister Lady Constance in the other), and they shared "the agony of having to dress up and waste time being social; the disinclination to argue (Plum once tried to arrange with Guy Bolton that should one of them be talked about insultingly the other would not argue but agree, and, if possible, add details)." :) (Muir also quotes a lot of Plum's good lines, which is bound to pep up anybody's writing.) Lord Emsworth is an elderly, widowed peer devoted to Blandings Castle, his home in Shropshire; his greatest joy is his prize pig, Empress of Blandings, and his greatest trial is his younger son Freddie. As in the Wooster stories, a lot of young people crop up in various states of romantic difficulty. According to Freddie, the family treats Blandings like a Bastille to separate youngsters from unsuitable entanglements (being in Shropshire, it's inconvenient to reach from London). Emsworth's mind won't stay on anything except important matters, such as whether the roses have greenfly or Whiffles' CARE OF THE PIG. He's not foolish, but it's so hard to get him to concentrate on anything that doesn't interest him that it's usually hard to tell.) His butler has more of a grip than he does, but Beach isn't a Jeeves clone. "The Custody of the Pumpkin" Blandings has a tyrannical Scottish head gardener, McAllister by name. This story introduces Aggie Donaldson, a young American relation of McAllister's who's just become engaged to Freddie, Emsworth's younger son. Since Emsworth has always dreamed of some eligible girl who'd support Freddie, thus relieving *him* of having to do so, he immediately tries to pressure McAllister into sending Aggie away, leaving 2 problems: 1) Freddie's romantic entanglement, but 2) the bigger problem of Emsworth having sacked his head gardener just before competing in the pumpkin class at the Shrewsbury Show. And Angus McAllister has his pride, of course... "Lord Emsworth Acts for the Best" - but in this case, his new beard has made him a laughingstock behind his back, to the point where Beach plans to give notice so as to speak his mind. Emsworth, of course, is clueless; he's worried about why Freddie has returned from America 8 months after marrying the daughter of Donaldson's Dog-Biscuits, and sending telegrams that he's in trouble. (Freddie fits right in with Bertie Wooster's crowd, except that he has a job.) "Pig-hoo-o-o-o-ey!" After Blandings' pig-man got 14 days for being drunk and disorderly on his birthday (that's a good one in itself), the Empress stopped eating, so Emsworth's more worried about the Shropshire Agricultural Show than who his niece Angela wants to marry. "Company for Gertrude" - another of Emsworth's nieces, sent to Blandings to separate her from an unsuitable young parson. But "Beefy" Bingham was at Oxford with Freddie, and Freddie's back in England, trying to sell dog-biscuits. Unfortunately, Freddie is the last person to know how to impress Emsworth... "The Go-getter" is Freddie, who's actually a lot like his dad, but about selling dog-biscuits to his aunt Georgiana rather than about Blandings. Even he notices that cousin Gertrude's engagement to Bingham is coming unstuck, now that she's met a BBC tenor staying with Lady Constance - somebody far less promising than Bingham. "Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend" The 'girl friend' is actually a little girl from London, out for the August Bank Holiday, who wins Emsworth's heart by throwing stones at McAllister, the head gardener - and for her sake, Emsworth might even show a little backbone for once. (Rudyard Kipling considered this one of the most perfect short stories he knew.) "The Crime Wave at Blandings" Emsworth's little grandson George stalking Blandings with an airgun isn't the problem; the problem is that the *adults* can't be trusted with it after its confiscation. :) "Birth of a Salesman" Lord Emsworth, attending a wedding in New York, mistakenly chose to stay with Freddie rather than with a female relative with 6 Pekinese dogs. Now that Freddie's finally earning a living rather than sponging on his father, he's gotten uppity about people who neither toil nor spin. "Sticky Wicket at Blandings" Not only is Freddie at Blandings on another UK sales campaign - so is his uncle Galahad, his father's younger brother. Two generations of no-good younger sons in residence at once. :) Topping it all off, Lady Constance has taken it into her head that Blandings needs a more up-to-date butler than Beach.