SOURCE: “P. G. Wodehouse: Master of Farce,” in The Sewanee Review, Vol. XCIII, No. 4, Fall, 1985, pp. 609-17.

In the following essay, Galligan applauds the continuing interest in Wodehouse's work and deems him the master of literary farce.

P. G. Wodehouse wrote so much over so many years and made it look so easy that it was, in turn, easy for us to take him for granted and fail to recognize that he was a master of a difficult and valuable form—farce. Yet it is now obvious that he was a Master, but never an Old Master, always (even in his eighties and nineties) a Young Master, bubbling with delight and absolutely submissive to the demands of his form. The celebration of his centennial (in October 1981) had the happy effect of bringing many of his books back into print and of spurring the publication of several books about...