The Man with Two Left Feet, and Other Stories is a collection of short stories by British author P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the UK on 8 March 1917 by Methuen & Co., London, and in the US on 1 February 1933 by A. L. Burt and Co., New York.[1] All the stories had previously appeared in periodicals, usually The Strand Magazine in the United Kingdom and The Red Book Magazine or The Saturday Evening Post in the United States.
It is a miscellaneous collection and includes several stories that are more serious than Wodehouse's more well-known comic fiction. Wodehouse biographer Richard Usborne stated that the collection was "mostly sentimental apprentice work", though one light-hearted story, "Extricating Young Gussie", is notable for the first appearance in print of two of Wodehouse's best-known characters, Jeeves and his master Bertie Wooster (although Bertie's surname is not given and Jeeves's role is very small), and Bertie's fearsome Aunt Agatha.[2]
In the US version of the book, "Wilton's Holiday", "Crowned Heads", and the two-part "The Mixer" were omitted, and replaced with three Reggie Pepper stories that had appeared in the UK collection My Man Jeeves (1919). These stories were "Absent Treatment", "Rallying Round Old George" (later rewritten as the Mulliner story "George and Alfred"), and "Doing Clarence a Bit of Good" (later rewritten as the Jeeves story "Jeeves Makes an Omelette").
- ^ McIlvaine (1990), pp. 31–33, A21.
- ^ Usborne, Richard (2003). Plum Sauce: A P. G. Wodehouse Companion. New York: The Overlook Press. pp. 147–148. ISBN 1-58567-441-9.