The Prince and Betty. - 1912

London: Mills and Boon, Limited,, 1912. Inscribed to his parents in the month of publication First British edition, first impression, presentation copy, inscribed by the author on the front free endpaper, "To Father and Mother, with love from Plum, May 1912". The author's father, Henry Ernest Wodehouse (1845-1929), was a British magistrate based in Hong Kong, and his mother Eleanor (1861-1941) was the daughter of a vicar. His father's work meant his parents were often abroad, and the young Wodehouse was regularly cared for by aunts and nannies, though in later life he would emphasis his childhood's unremarkableness. "The three essentials for an autobiography are that its compiler shall have had an eccentric father, a miserable, misunderstood childhood and a hell of a time at a public school, and I enjoyed none of these advantages. My father was as normal as rice pudding, my childhood went like a breeze, from start to finish. As for my schooldays at Dulwich, they were just six years of unbroken bliss." The Prince and Betty was first published in the US in February earlier the same year. Though the two editions bear the same title, the British edition tells "a completely different story" from the American, featuring new characters and a new setting, and retaining only a brief romantic episode on the island country Mervo. This copy is a second issue, with 32 pages of terminal advertisements as called for. Provenance: from the collection of the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts (1941-2021), with his posthumous bookplate. Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt, front cover lettered in black, publisher's device to rear cover in black. With 32 pp. of advertisements at the rear. Spine slightly cocked and faded, ends bumped and lightly worn, a couple of marks to front cover, gutter cracked between a few gatherings with traces of early repair, small chip to lower margin of p. 29/30, light foxing to edges and first few leaves, contents otherwise clean. A very good copy. Jasen 16; McIlvaine A15b.2.