These early stories, first published together in 1917, show Wodehouse perfecting his craft. Characters include a talking dog, a private eye who wants to be an actor, a bank clerk who cannot dance, an ugly policeman, a baseball-mad businessman, and a black cat. The star attraction of the volume for most readers will probably be ‘Extricating Young Gussie’, the first story to feature Jeeves, though in a minor role. His employer, Bertie (furnished with an Aunt Agatha but no surname) had not yet, like Wodehouse himself, ‘appreciated the man’s qualities’. All the stories, however, bear the unmistakable imprint of the author’s comic genius.