Additional information
by P. G. Wodehouse (Author)
A Prefect's Uncle is one of P. G. Wodehouse's early school stories, a comic boarding-school novel of cricket, mischief, loyalty, and impossible family embarrassment. At Beckford College, Gethryn is a respected prefect, cricketer, and senior boy until Reginald Farnie arrives at the school. Farnie is younger, troublesome, and thoroughly disruptive-and, unfortunately for Gethryn's dignity, he also happens to be his uncle. Project Gutenberg describes the novel as a 1903 school story in which Gethryn must balance his responsibilities as a prefect with family loyalty after Farnie's behaviour causes trouble.
First published in 1903, A Prefect's Uncle belongs to Wodehouse's earliest period, before Jeeves, Wooster, Blandings, and the later country-house comedies made him one of the great comic writers in English. The machinery is already visible: social embarrassment, youthful rebellion, cricket matches, school rules, comic misunderstanding, and the absurdity of authority placed under pressure. For readers of classic British humour, school stories, early Wodehouse, cricket fiction, and Edwardian comic novels, this is a useful and entertaining look at the young Wodehouse learning how to make order collapse gracefully.
