Cocktail Time: A Novel about a Novel

$50 · Offered by Book Collector Inc

Author: Pelham Grenville "P G" Wodehouse (1881-1975) Year: 1958 Publisher: Simon and Schuster Place: New York Description: 219 pages. Octavo (8 1/4" x 5 3/4") bound in original publisher's boards in half pink and black with blind stamped pictorial to cover and black and gilt lettering to spine with original jacket. (APG: 93b) First American edition limited run of 8000 copies. Cocktail Time is a comic novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United Kingdom on June 20, 1958 by Herbert Jenkins, London and in the United States on July 24, 1958 by Simon Schuster, Inc., New York. It stars Frederick Twistleton, Earl of Ickenham, better known as Uncle Fred. The story begins when Uncle Fred knocks off Sir Raymond Bastable’s top hat with a Brazil nut fired through the window of the Drones Club from a catapult. Sir Raymond naturally assumes that the culprit was a young Drone, but is unsure how to respond. A letter to the Times would open him to ridicule, especially as he is about to stand for Parliament. Uncle Fred suggests writing a novel exposing the iniquities of the younger generation. The eventual novel, “Cocktail Time”, which Bastable publishes under a pseudonym, becomes a succès de scandale after being condemned by a bishop. Afraid of being unmasked as the author, Bastable allows his ne’er-do-well nephew Cosmo Wisdom to take the credit, and the royalties, of the book. But, with his friend Gordon “Oily” Carlisle, and Oily’s wife Gertie, Cosmo plots to blackmail Sir Raymond

• Binding: Hardcover

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