- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd; New edition edition (13 Dec 1969)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140030409
- ISBN-13: 978-0140030402
- Product Dimensions: 17.6 x 11 x 1.4 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,000,603 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I used to read Wodehouse for the language as well as the plots, now I read him mainly for the plots. The language remains inventive, but certain verbal gags tend to be repeated ad nauseam, which, if one has become familiar with 2/3 of Sir Pelham's oeuvre, could be tedious, if not wince-making. The plot of Spring Fever is, as usual, incredibly silly and concerned with a series of predicaments and their inevitable resolution. The pacing is excellent and the twists are ingenious enough and it is they that carry the story forward.
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
`These times in which we live are not good times for Earls. Theirs was a great racket while it lasted, but the boom days are over.' So says Wodehouse of Lord Shortlands living out of the carefully measured pocket of his daughter Lady Adela. If only he could raise two hundred pounds as down payment on a pub he could elope with his cook.
Lord Shortlands plan is complicated by the butler competing for the affections of the cook, Stanwood Cobbold and his ex-burglar valet, August Robb and the on-off engagement of daughter Teresa to Mike Cardinal.
Lord Shortlands other daughter Clare is also engaged to Cosmo Blair an artist of some repute, `Don't call him a pot-bellied perisher!', `Well, what else can you call him?' asked Lord Shortlands, like Roget trying to collect material for his Thesaurus. Not good time for Earls but good times for readers of Wodehouse's patented brand of comic novelette.
Lord Shortlands plan is complicated by the butler competing for the affections of the cook, Stanwood Cobbold and his ex-burglar valet, August Robb and the on-off engagement of daughter Teresa to Mike Cardinal.
Lord Shortlands other daughter Clare is also engaged to Cosmo Blair an artist of some repute, `Don't call him a pot-bellied perisher!', `Well, what else can you call him?' asked Lord Shortlands, like Roget trying to collect material for his Thesaurus. Not good time for Earls but good times for readers of Wodehouse's patented brand of comic novelette.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
5 reviews
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
Runnin' High
18 Dec 2007
Format:Hardcover
"Spring Fever" is a classic example of P.G. Wodehouse's inimitable style, a story so convoluted in concoction that it actually works. The story begins when Stanwood Cobbold, a millionaire heir with a face like a hippo, is sent to London by his father to keep him from marrying a Hollywood actress. He is escorted by his valet and reformed thief, Augustus Robb, and his friend, Mike Cardinal, the Hollywood agent with the face of a Greek god. Throw into the mix Lord Shortlands, a destitute earl who longs for two hundred pounds so he can marry his cook, his daughter Teresa who wants nothing to do with Mike Cardinal, and his butler who also wants to marry the cook and will stop at nothing to woo her away from Lord Shortlands.
All of the troubles and concerns of these characters intertwine when Stanwood is meant to visit Lord Shortlands at his castle. However, his Hollywood paramour has just arrived in London, and he doesn't want to leave her. Mike Cardinal agrees to visit the castle pretending to be Stanwood so that he can woo Teresa, with her and her father the only ones in the know. But when Mervyn Spink (Lord Shortland's conniving butler) catches on, he springs a plot of pretense of his own involving the real Stanwood Cobbold. As the story progresses, more and more lies need to be told until the reader is uncertain as to how any of this can be wrapped up with all characters satisfied.
"Spring Fever" is a classic comic novel from P.G. Wodehouse. It is a time capsule of a particular era and a portrait of the strictures of British high (although a little cash-strapped) society. Its humor manages to transcend time and tradition, making Wodehouse's writing truly timeless.
All of the troubles and concerns of these characters intertwine when Stanwood is meant to visit Lord Shortlands at his castle. However, his Hollywood paramour has just arrived in London, and he doesn't want to leave her. Mike Cardinal agrees to visit the castle pretending to be Stanwood so that he can woo Teresa, with her and her father the only ones in the know. But when Mervyn Spink (Lord Shortland's conniving butler) catches on, he springs a plot of pretense of his own involving the real Stanwood Cobbold. As the story progresses, more and more lies need to be told until the reader is uncertain as to how any of this can be wrapped up with all characters satisfied.
"Spring Fever" is a classic comic novel from P.G. Wodehouse. It is a time capsule of a particular era and a portrait of the strictures of British high (although a little cash-strapped) society. Its humor manages to transcend time and tradition, making Wodehouse's writing truly timeless.
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Nearly Blandings Castle
8 Aug 2007
Format:Hardcover
This one-off novel, dating from 1948, follows just after a Jeeves novel, Joy in the Morning (1947), a Blandings saga, Full Moon (1947), and just before the excellent Uncle Dynamite (1948) and another Wooster, The Mating Season (1949). Arguably, it stems from the era of Wodehouse at the top of his form. Nevertheless, it seems to be pieced together from a musical comedy, with one of the longest and most unconvincing love scenes in his ouvre, a thin and unlikely plot, and the happy ending repeatedly dished so many times that the deus ex machina tie up seems almost anticlimactic when it comes.
Those would be major problems for most writers, but they are merely small oversights for Wodehouse, since this book yet contains some of his best sustained scenes and most quoted lines. Wodehouse liked it well enough to rehash it as The Old Reliable in 1951. It's almost a Blandings Castle novel, with Lord Shortlands instead of Emsworth, but with far more dialogue, as if written for the stage. Even after the main characters exit to the altar or registry, there are enough loose ends left to fill another novel, which likely suggested The Old Reliable. Not top drawer PGW, but a readable light novel just the same.
Those would be major problems for most writers, but they are merely small oversights for Wodehouse, since this book yet contains some of his best sustained scenes and most quoted lines. Wodehouse liked it well enough to rehash it as The Old Reliable in 1951. It's almost a Blandings Castle novel, with Lord Shortlands instead of Emsworth, but with far more dialogue, as if written for the stage. Even after the main characters exit to the altar or registry, there are enough loose ends left to fill another novel, which likely suggested The Old Reliable. Not top drawer PGW, but a readable light novel just the same.
15 of 22 people found the following review helpful
A true Wodehouse
22 Jun 1998
Format:Hardcover
Written in P.G.W's inimitable style, Spring Fever has as its principle characters a young man who looks like a greek god and has brains too ( Note: Brains preferring to ignore gentlemen with drop-dead-handsome good looks), a girl with equally good looks but not so sharp a brain, another young man with neither the looks mentioned above nor the brains, also mentioned above, and a Lord, given to uttering sudden exclamations, and not so given to contributing intelligent ideas to any conversation involving himself. Add to this lot of players a daughter hell-bent on keeping her father, the afore mentioned Lord, in proper discipline, a dashing butler with a cunning mind, and a stamp collector husband and you get a simply riotous tale. This tale, as every Wodehouse tale, has his usual ingredients - engagements between 'ladies' and 'gentlemen' being solemnised in every other chapter and broken in the very next, an amazing array of problems being solved equally amazingly as yet another amazin array of P. comes up. Simply lovely. Wodehouse ranks right up there with the best.
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