One of the best of P.G. Wodehouse’s works is The Inimitable Jeeves, which I have recently re-read. In order to impress his friend Bingo Little’s rich uncle, Lord Bittlesham, Bertie Wooster has to pretend that he is the romantic novelist Rosie M. Banks, whose writing Bittlesham greatly admires. The trick succeeds. Eventually, when Bingo wishes to marry a waitress without being cut out of his uncle’s money, he begs Bertie to go and plead with Lord Bittlesham on his behalf. He advises him to ‘start off by sending the old boy an autographed copy of your latest effort with a flattering inscription’.
‘What is my latest?’ asks Bertie, who is unfamiliar with the oeuvre whose authorship he claims. ‘“The Woman Who Braved All”, said young Bingo, “…The shop windows are full of nothing but it. It looks to me from the picture on the jacket the sort of book any chappie would be proud to have written.”’
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