The Globe By the Way Book

The Globe By the Way Book is, to quote a contemporary source: "a broad smile, more or less, chiefly more, from cover to cover. It ‘whips hypocrisy’ and skits at the follies and fancies and foibles of the day with a light, not to say lightning touch, which tickles a lot but never stings. ‘Buy a bee and grow your own honey. If one bee is not sufficient get two bees, and so on.’ ‘The best way of telling a toadstool from a mushroom is to make the servant eat it. If she turns blue it is a toadstool.’ But to quote more would be giving the book away, whereas it should cost a shilling a copy. Some paper people I know want the earth; others take the Globe; but week-enders cannot afford to be without the ‘By The Way Book’ if they mean to die happily.” (Abridged, The World’s Paper Trade Review, London, July-September 1908)"

First edition

The book was written by P. G. Wodehouse and Herbert Westbrook, and was published in June 1908[1] by the Globe Publishing Company, London. It is NOT, as many biographies and bibliographies of P. G. Wodehouse erroneously state, a collection of extracts from the By The Way column, a feature of London newspaper The Globe. For more information on this book see http://www.madameulalie.org/articles/Deconstructing_The_Globe_By_the_Way_Book.html

Wodehouse was editor of the By the Way column from 1904 to 1909, and wrote a fictionalised account of his time on the paper, also in collaboration with Westbrook, titled Not George Washington.