|
Date |
Event |
|
1877
Feb 3 |
Marriage of
Plum’s parents, Eleanor (née Deane) and Henry Ernest |
|
1877
Sept 26 |
Birth of
his eldest brother Philip Peveril |
|
1879
May 11 |
Birth of
his second eldest brother Ernest Armine |
|
1881
Oct 15 |
Birth of
Pelham Grenville Wodehouse at 1 Vale Place, Guildford, Surrey |
|
1885
May 23 |
Birth of
Ethel Newton, the future Lady Wodehouse, in Kings Lynn, Norfolk |
|
1886 |
PGW
attended Dame School in Croydon, Surrey |
|
1889 |
PGW was
transferred to Elizabeth College, in Guernsey |
|
1891 |
PGW moved
to Malvern House, a preparatory school in Kearsney, Kent |
|
1892
May 30 |
Birth of
his younger brother Richard Lancelot Deane |
|
1894
to 1900 |
PGW
attended Dulwich College |
|
1900 |
Received
his first payment for writing: from Public School Magazine
for an article entitled Some Aspects of Game-Captaincy |
|
1900
Sept |
Started
work at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, London and took rooms in
Markham Square, Chelsea |
|
1901
June |
Caught
mumps |
|
1901
July |
First real
short story published in Public School Magazine, entitled The
Prize Poem |
|
1901
Aug 16 |
First
contribution to Globe newspaper |
|
1902
Sept 9 |
Resigned
from the Bank |
|
1902
Sept 17 |
First
article for Punch, entitled An Unfinished Collection |
|
1902
Sept 19 |
First book
published, The Pothunters |
|
1902 |
Moved to
Walpole Street, Chelsea |
|
1903 |
Stayed at
Emsworth House School, Hampshire |
|
1903
Aug |
Joined the By
the Way column of The Globe on a permanent basis |
|
1904
April 16 |
First visit
to the USA |
|
1904
Aug |
Appointed
Editor of the By The Way column at the Globe |
|
1904
Dec 10 |
First lyric
– Put Me In My Little Cell – sung in Sergeant Brue
at the Strand Theatre |
|
1905
July |
First
contribution to the Strand, entitled The Wirepullers |
|
1906
March 6 |
Employed by
Seymour Hicks as the resident lyrist at the Aldwych Theatre,
working on The Beauty of Bath |
|
1906
March 19 |
First met
Jerome Kern, also working on The Beauty of Bath |
|
1906
Aug |
First novel
for adults, entitled Love Among the Chickens, published by
George Newnes Ltd. There is confusion over the date, the second
edition giving July as the date of the first printing and Newnes
themselves claiming June. The first edition is silent on the
matter |
|
1907 |
Moved to
the Hicks Theatre, still writing lyrics for Seymour Hicks |
|
1907
Dec 6 |
Joined
Gaiety Theatre as lyrist |
|
1909 |
Second
visit to USA, where he sold short stories to Colliers and Cosmopolitan,
and from where he resigned his job at the Globe |
|
1909
May 11 |
First book,
Love Among the Chickens, published in USA |
|
1911
Aug 24 |
First play,
A Gentleman of Leisure, opened in New York |
|
1913
April 8 |
First play
in London, Brother Alfred, flopped |
|
1914
Jan |
First
substantial contribution to a musical production, Nuts and Wine,
which also flopped in London |
|
1914
Aug 2 |
Returned to
New York |
|
1914
Aug 3 |
Met Ethel
Rowley, née Newton, an English widow, at a New York party |
|
1914
Sept 30 |
Married
Ethel Rowley at The Little Church Round The Corner, off
Madison Square on East 29th Street, and inherited her daughter
Leonora |
|
1915
March |
Appointed
drama critic of Vanity Fair |
|
1915
June 26 |
First
appearance of Lord Emsworth and Blandings Castle in the
serialisation of Something New (Something Fresh is
UK title) in Saturday Evening Post |
|
1915
Sept 18 |
Jeeves
(and, possibly, Bertie Wooster) made a first appearance, in Extricating
Young Gussie, published in Saturday Evening Post |
|
1916
Sept 25 |
First
Bolton, Wodehouse, Kern musical comedy, entitled Miss
Springtime appeared in New York and was successful |
|
1919
June 7 |
First
Oldest Member story, A Woman is Only a Woman, published in Saturday
Evening Post |
|
1923
April |
First Ukridge
short story, Ukridge’s Dog College, appeared in Cosmopolitan |
|
1926 |
PGW elected
a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature |
|
1926
July |
First Mr
Mulliner story, entitled The Truth About George, appeared
in the Strand |
|
1927
April 1 |
Took lease
of 17 Norfolk Street (now Dunraven Street) in London |
|
1929
May 27 |
Death of
PGW’s father Ernest |
|
1930
June 1 |
Started
first contract with MGM in Hollywood |
|
1931
June 7 |
Interview
with a reporter from the Los Angeles Times published, which caused
a furore in Hollywood as PGW complained about being paid so much
for doing so little |
|
1932
Dec 12 |
Leonora
married Peter Cazalet |
|
1933
Aug |
First
instalment of the first Jeeves and Bertie Wooster novel, Thank
You Jeeves, published in the Strand |
|
1934
Jan 19 |
Successfully
challenged in court the UK Inland Revenue’s attempts to claim
more income tax on his earnings |
|
1934
March 31 |
Birth of
Leonora and Peter Cazalet’s daughter, Sheran |
|
1934
June |
Settled in
Le Touquet |
|
1935
June 3 |
Bought Low
Wood in Le Touquet |
|
1936
April 26 |
Birth of
Leonora and Peter Cazalet’s son, Edward |
|
1936
June 26 |
Awarded
medallion by International Mark Twain Society |
|
1936
Oct 9 |
Death of
PGW’s brother Armine |
|
1936
Oct 10 |
Started
second contract with MGM in Hollywood |
|
1937
Nov 4 |
Returned to
Le Touquet |
|
1939
June 21 |
Invested as
D Litt at Oxford University |
|
1939
July 8 |
Visited
Dulwich College for last time, writing a report on a cricket match
against St Paul’s which was published in The Alleynian |
|
1940
May 21 |
PGW, Ethel
and animals tried to leave Le Touquet in the light of the German
advance, but their car twice broke down |
|
1940
July 21 |
Start of
PGW internment by Germans in camps successively at Loos Prison (Lille),
Liege, Huy and Tost (Upper Silesia) |
|
1941
June 21 |
PGW
released from internment and taken to Berlin |
|
1941
June 26 |
PGW made
the first of five radio broadcasts for fans in neutral USA |
|
1941
July 15 |
Cassandra’s
radio broadcast of a vituperative attack on PGW, the BBC only
allowing it on the direction of Duff Cooper |
|
1941 |
Death of
PGW’s mother Eleanor |
|
1943
Sept 11 |
PGW
transferred to Paris |
|
1944
May 16 |
Death of
PGW’s step-daughter Leonora |
|
1947
April 27 |
PGW and
Ethel arrived in US on SS America |
|
1948
Sept 2 |
PGW used
the pseudonym Stephen Powys for a play jointly written with Guy
Bolton which was successful in London |
|
1949
June |
PGW’s
challenge to the US tax authorities ended in the Supreme Court
with some decisions going in his favour and others against |
|
1952
March |
Ethel
bought a house in Basket Neck Lane, Remsenburg, Long Island, New
York, close to Guy Bolton’s home |
|
1953
July 15 |
PGW resumed
contributing fortnightly articles to Punch |
|
1955
May 1 |
They gave
up their New York apartment |
|
1955
Dec 16 |
PGW became
an American citizen |
|
1960
Jan 27 |
PGW elected
to the Punch table |
|
1961
July 15 |
BBC
broadcast An Act of Homage and Reparation by Evelyn Waugh |
|
1965
May 27 |
BBC TV
series The World of Wooster commenced |
|
1967
Feb 16 |
BBC TV
series Blandings Castle commenced |
|
1967
Nov |
P G
Wodehouse Animal Shelter opened in Remsenburg |
|
1974
Nov |
PGW’s
last complete novel, entitled Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen,
published in the UK and immediately topped the list of
best-sellers |
|
1975
Jan 1 |
PGW
knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, his wife Ethel taking the title
Lady Wodehouse |
|
1975
Feb 14 |
PGW died in
hospital |
|
1977
Oct 15 |
Formal
opening of the PGW Memorial Corner of the Dulwich College Library |
|
1978
Sept 19 |
Sunset
at Blandings, a partially
completed book, published posthumously with notes by Richard
Usborne |
|
1984
Oct |
Lady
Wodehouse died |
