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Jeeves and Wooster in New York, P. G. Wodehouse, Penguin Group (Canada), 1986, , . .

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Reginald is a fictional character in the short stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse (1881–1975), being the valet of (Bertram Wilberforce Wooster). Created in 1915, Jeeves continued to appear in Wodehouse's work until his last completed novel Aunts Aren't Gentlemen in 1974, a span of 59 years. The name "Jeeves" comes from Percy Jeeves (1888–1916), a Warwickshire cricketer killed in the First World War.[1]

Both the name "Jeeves" and the character of Jeeves have come to be thought of as the quintessential name and nature of a valet or butler inspiring many similar characters (as well as the name of the Internet search engine Ask Jeeves). A "Jeeves" is now a generic term in references such as the Oxford English Dictionary.[2]

In a conversation with a policeman in "Jeeves and the Kid Clementina", Jeeves refers to himself as both a "gentleman's personal gentleman" and a "personal gentleman's gentleman."[3] This means that Jeeves is a valet, not a butler—that is, he serves a man and not a household. However, Bertie Wooster has lent out Jeeves as a butler on several occasions, and notes: "If the call comes, he can buttle with the best of them."[4]

Jeeves is known for his convoluted yet precise speech and for quoting from Shakespeare and famous romantic poets. In his free time, he likes to relax with "improving" books such as the complete works of Spinoza, or to read "Dostoyevsky and the great Russians".[5] He "glides" or "shimmers" in and out of rooms and may appear or disappear suddenly and without warning. His potable concoctions, both of the alcoholic and the morning-after variety, are legendary.

Jeeves frequently displays mastery over a vast range of subjects, from philosophy (his favourite philosopher is Spinoza; he finds Nietzsche "fundamentally unsound"[6]) through an encyclopaedic knowledge of poetry, science, history, psychology, geography, politics, and literature. He is also a "bit of a whizz" in all matters pertaining to gambling, car maintenance, etiquette, and women. However, his most impressive feats are a flawless knowledge of the British aristocracy and making antidotes (especially for hangovers). His mental prowess is attributed to eating fish, according to Bertie, who often offers the dish to Jeeves.

Jeeves has a distinct—and often negative—opinion of items about which Bertie is enthusiastic, such as a garish vase, an uncomplimentary painting of Wooster created by one of the many women with whom he is briefly infatuated, a moustache, monogrammed handkerchiefs, a straw boater, an alpine hat, a scarlet cummerbund, spats in the Eton colours, white dinner jacket, or purple socks. Wooster's decision to take up playing the banjolele in Thank You, Jeeves almost led to a permanent rift between the two.

Jeeves is a member of the Junior Ganymede Club, a club for butlers and valets, in whose club book all members must record the exploits of their employers to forewarn other butlers and valets. The section labelled "WOOSTER, BERTRAM" is the largest in the book. In Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit it contained "eleven pages",[7] and by Much Obliged, Jeeves it has grown to eighteen pages.[8] However, at the end of Much Obliged, Jeeves, Jeeves informs Wooster that he has destroyed the eighteen pages, anticipating that he will never leave the latter's employment.

Only once in the Wodehouse canon does Jeeves appear without Wooster: , in which he is on loan to the 9th Earl of Rowcester while Wooster attends a school where the idle rich learn self-sufficiency in case of social upheaval. The novel was adapted from Wodehouse's play Come On, Jeeves, which he felt needed a more conventional ending; but he was unwilling to marry Wooster off.

Jeeves's first job was as a page boy at a girls' school, after which he had at least eleven other employers. Before entering the employ of Bertie Wooster, he was with Lord Worplesdon, resigning after nearly a year because of Worplesdon's eccentric choice of evening dress; Mr Digby Thistleton (later Lord Bridgnorth), who sold hair tonic; Mr Montague Todd, a financier who was in the second year of a prison term when Jeeves mentioned him to Bertie; Lord Brancaster, who gave port-soaked seedcake to his pet parrot; and Lord Frederick Ranelagh, swindled in Monte Carlo by recurring antagonist Soapy Sid. His tenure with Bertie had occasional lapses, during which he was employed elsewhere: he worked for Lord Rowcester for the length of Ring for Jeeves; Marmaduke "" Chuffnell for a week in Thank You, Jeeves, after giving notice because of Bertie's unwillingness to give up the banjolele; J. Washburn Stoker for a short period; Gussie Fink-Nottle, who masqueraded as Bertie in The Mating Season; and Sir Watkyn Bassett as a trick to get Bertie released from prison in Stiff Upper Lip, Jeeves.

Jeeves's first name of Reginald was not revealed for 56 years, until the penultimate novel in the series, Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971), when Bertie hears another valet greet Jeeves with "Hullo, Reggie." The readers may have been surprised to learn Jeeves's first name, but Bertie was stunned by the revelation "that he had a first name" in the first place.[10][11]

In his 1953 semi-autobiographical book written with , Bring on the Girls!, Wodehouse suggests that Jeeves was based on an actual butler called Eugene Robinson that Wodehouse employed for research purposes. He recounts a story where Robinson extricated Wodehouse from a real-life predicament. Wodehouse also recounts that he named his Jeeves after Percy Jeeves (1888–1916), a then-popular English cricketer for Warwickshire. Percy Jeeves was killed at the Battle of the Somme during the attack on High Wood in July 1916, two months before the first appearance of the eponymous butler who would make his name a household word.

"The most invaluable nugget contained in the book (Wodehouse at the Wicket by P. G. Wodehouse and Murray Hedgcock) traces the origin of the name Jeeves to Percy Jeeves, a Warwickshire professional cricketer known for his impeccable grooming, smart shirts and spotlessly clean flannels. Wodehouse probably saw him take a couple of smooth, effortless catches in a match between and Warwickshire. The name, the immaculate appearance and silent efficiency stuck and the inimitable manservant appeared first in 1916, just weeks after the original Percy Jeeves died in the war in France." [12] Wodehouse witnessed Percy Jeeves bowling at Cheltenham Cricket Festival in 1913.

Jeeves' propensity for wisdom and knowledge is so well known that it inspired the original name of the Internet search website Ask.com (called "AskJeeves" from 1996 to 2006). In the twenty-first century, a "Jeeves" is a generic term (in the fashion of "a Jonah") for any useful and reliable person, found in dictionaries such as the Oxford English Dictionary[13] or the Encarta World English Dictionary.[14] The term has also been used in World of Warcraft, where an engineering character may construct a "Jeeves" robot to repair equipment.[15] Jeeves has three aunts who, he informs Wooster, are very placid in nature, in contrast to Wooster's aunts. One of Jeeves's aunts is resident in the vicinity of Maiden Eggesford and owns a cat, which features in Aunts Aren't Gentlemen. Her address is mentioned to be "Balmoral Castle, Mafeking Road". In Right Ho, Jeeves he refers to his Aunt Annie: "in times of domestic disagreement it was necessary only to invite my Aunt Annie for a visit to heal all breaches between the other members of the household. In the mutual animosity excited by Aunt Annie, those who had become estranged were reconciled almost immediately." The third aunt had varicose veins in her legs that were hideous to view, though improved to such a great extent by a patent medicine that she allowed them to be photographed for an advertisement for the product.

Jeeves also has an uncle, Charlie Silversmith, who is butler at Deverill Hall in . Jeeves frequently writes letters to his uncle and Wooster holds Charlie in high regard. On occasion, Jeeves has been known to take the place of his uncle when circumstances necessitate his absence.[citation needed]

In The Rummy Affair of Old Biffy, we learn he also has a niece named Mabel, who falls in love with Charles Edward "Biffy" Biffen during an ocean voyage. An old friend of Bertie's, Biffy is so absent-minded that he subsequently forgets everything but her first name and that he successfully proposed to her. Feeling she has been toyed with, Mabel breaks off the engagement, only to resume it when Jeeves intervenes and sends Bertie, Biffin, and Roderick Glossop (to whose daughter, Honoria, Biffy became betrothed after the disappearance of Mabel) to see a historical sideshow at a fair in which Mabel is appearing.[citation needed]

The concept which eventually became Jeeves actually preceded Bertie in Wodehouse's imagination: he had long considered the idea of a butler—later a valet—who could solve any problem. A character named , who was very much like Bertie but without Jeeves, was the protagonist of seven short stories. Wodehouse decided to rewrite the Pepper stories, switching Reggie's character to Bertie Wooster and combining him with an ingenious valet.

Jeeves and Bertie first appeared in "Extricating Young Gussie", a short story published in September 1915, in which Jeeves's character is minor and not fully developed and Bertie's surname appears to be Mannering-Phipps. The first fully recognisable Jeeves and Bertie story was "The Artistic Career of Corky", published in early 1916. As the series progressed, Jeeves assumed the role of Bertie's co-protagonist; indeed, their meeting was told in November 1916 in "Jeeves Takes Charge".

Bertie narrates all the stories but two, "Bertie Changes His Mind" (which Jeeves himself narrates), and Ring for Jeeves (which features Jeeves but not Bertie and is written in the third person). The stories are set in three primary locations: London, where Bertie has a flat and is a member of the raucous Drones Club; various stately homes in the English countryside, most commonly Totleigh Towers or Brinkley Court; or New York City and a few other locations in the United States. All take place in a timeless world based on an idealised vision of England before World War II, essentially the same world found in the fiction of Wodehouse's near-contemporary, . Only Ring for Jeeves mentions World War II.

Most of the Jeeves stories were originally published as magazine pieces before being collected into books, although 11 of the short stories were reworked and divided into 18 chapters to make an episodic semi-novel called . Other collections, most notably The World of Jeeves, restore these to their original form of 11 distinct stories.

The collection The World of Jeeves (first published in 1967, reprinted in 1989) contains all of the Jeeves short stories (with the exception of "Extricating Young Gussie") presented more or less in narrative chronological order. An efficient method of reading the entire Jeeves canon is to read The World of Jeeves followed by the eleven novels in order of publication. The novels share a certain amount of sequential narrative development between them, and the later novels are essentially sequels to the earlier ones. Thank You, Jeeves! (1935)—Arthur Treacher as Jeeves, and David Niven as Bertie, meet a girl and help her brother stop two spies trying to get his secret plans. The film has almost nothing to do with the book of that title. Although Treacher looks the part,[citation needed] the script calls on him to play the character as unhelpful and rather unpleasant, with none of the trademark brilliance of the literary Jeeves.

Jeeves (22 April 1975 to 24 May 1975, 38 performances)—An unsuccessful musical loosely based on Wodehouse, opened in London (with Michael Aldridge as Jeeves, and David Hemmings as Bertie). Music by , Lyrics & Book by and based on the Wodehouse book: "Code of The Woosters."

By Jeeves (1 May 1996 to 12 February 1997; 28 October 2001 to 30 December 2001, 73 performances)—A more successful complete rewrite of the earlier version, opened in London (with Malcolm Sinclair as Jeeves, and Steven Pacey as Bertie), and premiered in the U.S. in November 1996 (with Richard Kline as Jeeves, and John Scherer as Bertie). It was produced again in 2001 on Broadway (with as Jeeves, and Scherer as Bertie), with one recorded performance released as a video film and aired on TV.

In 's comic The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: Black Dossier, Jeeves appears in the segment "What Ho, Gods of the Abyss?" in which he contacts the League through a cousin in the British Museum to help combat the arrival of a Mi-go to Brinkley Court and Bertie's 's possession by . The Lovecraftian menaces are driven off by a League consisting of Mina Murray, , , and Orlando.

All Jeeves books are relevant, but many key points are sourced from: Carry on, Jeeves (1925, first meeting, poaching Anatole); Ring for Jeeves (1953, butler, WW2); Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit (1954, great Russians, eleven pages section); Much Obliged, Jeeves (1971, eighteen pages section, Reginald).

^ In the 1936 film Step Lively, Jeeves, Jeeves, portrayed by Arthur Treacher, states his first name to be Rupert. However, Wodehouse had nothing to do with the script of that film, and Treacher's Jeeves character is so unlike Wodehouse's Jeeves that the viewer could easily believe him to be a different Jeeves altogether.

^ Ring, Tony (2000?). " March Into The Twenty-first Century". Wodehouse.ru. Retrieved 2007-08-15. "The frequency with which the term 'Jeeves' is used without further explanation in the media of today, and its inclusion as a generic term in the Oxford English Dictionary, suggests that P G Wodehouse's Jeeves, together with his principal employer Bertie Wooster, remain the most popular of his many enduring characters."

^ Encarta World English Dictionary (2007 copyright). "Jeeves". Encarta.msn.com. Archived from the original on 2009-10-31. Retrieved 2007-08-15. "Jeeves [ jeevz ], noun - Definition: resourceful helper: a useful and reliable person who provides ready solutions to problems ( informal ) [Mid-20th century. < a character in the novels of P. G. Wodehouse]"

When a perfectly delightful trip to the countryside takes a turn for the worse, Bertie Wooster is unwittingly called on to play matchmaker - reconciling the affections of his host’s drippy daughter with his newt-fancying acquaintance Gussie Fink-Nottle. If Bertie, ably assisted by the ever-dependable Jeeves, can’t pull off the wedding of the season he’ll be forced to abandon his cherished bachelor status and marry the ghastly girl for himself! http://edufb.net/2770.pdf http://edufb.net/3814.pdf http://edufb.net/69.pdf http://edufb.net/2528.pdf http://edufb.net/3255.pdf http://edufb.net/2463.pdf http://edufb.net/2132.pdf