Блэдингс қамалы және басқа да әңгімелер

1935 short story collection by P. G. Wodehouse

Blandings Castle and Elsewhere is a collection of short stories by P. G. Wodehouse. It was first published in the United Kingdom on 12 April 1935 by Herbert Jenkins, London, and, as Blandings Castle, in the United States on 20 September 1935 by Doubleday Doran, New York. All the stories had previously appeared in Strand Magazine (UK) and all except the last in various US magazines.

The first six stories all take place at the book's namesake Blandings Castle; they are set some time between the events of Leave it to Psmith (1923) and those of Summer Lightning (1929). Lord Emsworth of Blandings Castle is depicted as a gentleman farmer, growing prize pumpkins and especially concerned with his prize pig, Empress of Blandings; he is also concerned with his nieces and nephews as well as the love life of his younger son Freddie Threepwood. The seventh story concerns Bobbie Wickham, an acquaintance and sometime fiancée of Bertie Wooster, who also appears in three of the stories in Mr Mulliner Speaking. The last five are narrated by Mr Mulliner and are set in Hollywood among the movie studios that Wodehouse knew from his time as a screenwriter in 1930–31.

Robert Hall used "Mr Potter Takes a Rest Cure" as an example of a Wodehouse short story where the romantic element is only a minor part of the story and treated farcically, as in Gandle's interrupted proposal of marriage to Bobbie Wickham, in contrast to stories in which romance plays a larger role or is not involved at all. The other example Hall gave of a short story similar to "Mr Potter Takes a Rest Cure" in this respect was "Uncle Fred Flits By". In "Mr Potter Takes a Rest Cure", the pompous politician Clifford Gandle exaggerates the neutral vowel which has replaced r at the end of words such as "desire", "here", and "there" in south east British English. It is made into a separate syllable, which Wodehouse represents with the spellings "desi ah", "hee yah", and "they ah" respectively. Gandle's exaggerated pronunciation of the final vowel in the words "Nature" and "razor" is shown by the spellings "Na chah" and "ra zah". Some of these changes also occur in the speech of other Wodehouse characters, such as Lavender Briggs in Service with a Smile. Percy Gorringe similarly refers to his mother as "Moth aw" in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit. In "The Castaways", which concerns Mr Mulliner's nephew Bulstrode Mulliner, a writer in Hollywood, writing dialogue for sound films is compared to being castaways on a desert island.

"The Castaways" was influenced by Wodehouse's experience writing dialogue for films. In a letter to fellow author William "Bill" Townend (dated 26 June 1930, as published in Author! Author! and Performing Flea), Wodehouse wrote: "When the Talkies came in and they had to have dialogue, the studios started handing out contracts right and left to everyone who had ever written a line of it. Only an author of exceptional ability and determination could avoid getting signed up. With the result that the migration to Hollywood has been like one of those great race movement of the Middle Ages. So though there is a touch of desert island about the place and one feels millions of miles from anywhere, one can always count on meeting half a dozen kindred spirits when one is asked out to dinner."

In The Strand Magazine, "Monkey Business", "The Nodder", "The Juice of an Orange", "The Rise of Minna Nordstrom", and "The Castaways" were illustrated by Gilbert Wilkinson. "Mr Potter Takes a Rest Cure" was illustrated by Charles Crombie. In American Magazine, "Monkey Business", "The Nodder", "The Juice of an Orange", and "The Rise of Minna Nordstrom" were illustrated by Roy F. Spreter. "Mr Potter Takes a Rest Cure" was published with illustrations by Wallace Morgan in Liberty. "Mr Potter Takes a Rest Cure", under the title "The Rest Cure", was published in the Family Herald and Weekly Star magazine (Montreal, Canada) on 8 May 1935. It was published in the Toronto Star Weekly on 11 May 1935. The story was translated into Swedish by Birgitta Hammar and published in the Stockholm magazine Böckernas värld in 1971, with illustrations by Gunnar Brusewitz. The five Mulliner stories in the collection were collected in the Mulliner Omnibus (1935), The World of Mr. Mulliner (1972), and the Wodehouse collection The Hollywood Omnibus (1985). "Monkey Business" and "The Rise of Minna Nordstrom" were included in the 1939 collection The Week End Wodehouse (US edition), published by Doubleday, Doran & Co. "Monkey Business" was also included in the 1960 book The Most of P. G. Wodehouse, published in October 1960 by Simon and Schuster, New York, and A Wodehouse Bestiary, edited by D. R. Bensen and published in October 1985 by Ticknor & Fields, New York. "The Nodder" was featured in the 1985 Wodehouse collection Short Stories.

Several of the Blandings shorts from this collection were adapted for the first series of The World of Wodehouse, broadcast in February and March 1967 in six half hour episodes. They starred Ralph Richardson as Lord Emsworth, Derek Nimmo as Freddie Threepwood, Meriel Forbes as Lady Constance, and Stanley Holloway as Beach. Unfortunately the master tapes of all but the first part ("Lord Emsworth and the Girl Friend"), were wiped, and no known copies exist. Some of the stories featured in the collection, "Mr Potter Takes a Rest Cure", "The Rise of Minna Nordstrom" and "The Nodder" (combined with "Monkey Business") were produced as part of the BBC's Wodehouse Playhouse series, starring John Alderton and Pauline Collins, airing in 1975 and 1976 respectively. In 2013 and 2014, BBC television aired a series titled Blandings starring Timothy Spall as Clarence, Jennifer Saunders as Connie, and Jack Farthing as Freddie. Beach was played by Mark Williams (2013) and Tim Vine (2014).