WODEHOUSE, P. G.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Collection of sheet music featuring his lyrics. A vast collection of published sheet music, including his first song written for the stage, and all five of the famous Princess Theatre collaborations of Wodehouse, Jerome Kern, and Guy Bolton. The collection also contains a few publications and bibliographical variants which are not recorded in Beth Juhl's "Published Music" section in McIlvaine's bibliography.Wodehouse started gaining recognition for his "prowess as a lyricist of natural grace and invention" (McCrum, p. 70) around the same time he wrote his first novels. Owen Hall approached him in 1904 to contribute a lyric for Hall's forthcoming musical Sergeant Brue at the Strand Theatre. "In the light of what was to come, his contribution ['Put Me in My Little Cell'] was a comparatively modest beginning, but in the evolution of his genius it was a milestone" (McCrum, p. 70).This collection has a particularly strong representation of early Wodehouse lyrics for Broadway productions. It includes many songs from his complete Princess Theatre collaborations with Kern and Bolton: Have a Heart; Oh, Boy!; Leave It to Jane; Oh, Lady! Lady!!; and Oh, My Dear! The trio collaborated on many other projects represented in this collection, and in 1917 "they had five shows running simultaneously on New York's Broadway, a feat never achieved before or after" (ODNB). Wodehouse "provided lyrics whose technical command, colloquial bent, and freshness of understatement perfectly matched Kern's

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