SIR PELHAM GRENVILLE WODEHOUSE was born on October 16, 1881, the third son of British magistrate Henry Ernest Wodehouse and his wife Eleanor. Young Wodehouse was not fond of his given names - "Pelham" and "Grenville" - and shortened it to "P.G." in his written works and answered to the nickname "Plum" amongst his friends and family. Educated and Dulwich College (an institution to which he remained devoted his entire life), Wodehouse began a career as a banker - a career he actively loathed - before turning to writing. His earliest stories were based on his life as a student (including his first novel, "The Pothunters," published in 1902) and were often serialized to great success, but it wasn't until he turned full-time to comic fiction that his career took off. Wodehouse was a prolific and tireless writer, churning out short stories, plays and novels at an astonishing rate for his entire life, in a career that lasted a breathtaking seventy-five years.His stable of literary characters included the sly, smooth Psmith, the charming and affable "Uncle Fred" Ickenham, Lord Emsworth, Pongo Twistleton and the rest of the habitués of Blandings Castle (the plot-lines of which often involved very large pigs), Madeleine Bassett, Bingo Little, Catsmeat Potter-Purbright, Mr. Mulliner and many, many others, none more beloved than the foppish gentleman of leisure Bertie Wooster and his unflappable and brainy manservant Jeeves. In the early 30's, Wodehouse fled England for France to avoid burdensome British taxes and was taken prisoner by the Germans in 1940. Released after a one-year's imprisonment, Wodehouse was forced to remain in Germany and was persuaded by his captors to make radio broadcasts - innocuous and comical, he believed - for the German government. These broadcasts were widely viewed in England as traitorous and after the war had ended, Wodehouse never returned to his native land, living forever as an exile. Wodehouse and his wife lived in New York taking dual British-American citizenship in 1955. He died in 1975, at the age of 93, in Southampton, New York, leaving behind an astonishing ninety books, forty plays and over two hundred short stories.