The Gold Bat
Price: $1,000.00
Whitwell, T. M. R. Hard Cover. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1904. First Edition. Very Good.
Illustrated by T. M. R. Whitwell with eight black and white plates. First edition, first issue, with two pages of advertisements to rear. Publisher's pictorial red cloth, stamped in gilt, white, silver, and black. Very good or better, with light rubbing to spine ends and corners of boards, a few tiny stress-tears to cloth at rear joint of spine, gift inscription to front free endpaper, some spotting to pages, slight creasing to pages, and light wear to edges of plate facing p. 202. Overall, a pleasing copy of this very early Wodehouse title. In The Gold Bat, O'Hara and Moriarty, two Irish students attending Wrykyn school, tar and feather a statue of local mayor Sir Eustace Briggs because of his reputation as a "hater of the Irish nation." O'Hara loses a tiny gold cricket bat at the scene of the crime, which belongs to his friend, Trevor, who is the captain of the cricket team and fears getting implicated in the incident. Meanwhile, a mysterious and diabolical group called The League pressures Trevor to select Rand-Brown for the rugby team over Barry, the latter of whom is the better player. One of Wodehouse's earliest novels, The Gold Bat was originally serialized in The Captain, as were many of his early school stories. P. G. Wodehouse (1881 - 1975) is regarded as one of Britain's greatest humorists. He created the endlessly entertaining fictional duo Bertie Wooster and his valet Jeeves, and was an important early Broadway lyricist, collaborating with songwriter Jerome Kern and writer Guy Bolton on many productions. In 1975, one month before Wodehouse died, he was knighted by the Queen alongside Charlie Chaplin. Item #PGW048
