Over a writing career that spanned more than fifty years Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, wrote in excess of one hundred novels.

A Damsel in Distress is one of his best entertaining romps, a romantic farce, with Wodehouse having a bit of fun with the concept of chivalry in the dawn of the jazz age at the expense of the fading aristocracy.

When George Bevan, 27-year-old American composer of successful musical comedies, hails a taxi on London's Piccadilly, he has no idea that, almost immediately, he would be sharing the vehicle with a damsel in distress—a mysterious young lady who takes refuge in his taxicab.

The young woman disappears almost as suddenly as she appeared, leaving George feeling like he may have fallen in love with her.

Unfortunately, he didn’t catch her name.

The damsel is, in fact, Lady Maud Marshmoreton, only daughter of the widowed 7th Earl of Marshmoreton.

Most of the story takes place at Belpher Castle, where Lord Marshmoreton resides with his son, daughter, sister, sister’s stepson, his secretary and many servants.

George, having succeeded in identifying Lady Maud, tracks her down to said Belpher Castle, a romantic rural manor, where mistaken identity leads to all manner of confusion and complications.

It’s a funny, charming, quick read with the obligatory happy ending all around.

P.G. WODEHOUSE 1881–1975) was an English author whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, humorous verses, poems, song lyrics, and magazine articles. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years, and his many writings continue to be widely read. An acknowledged master of English prose, Wodehouse has been admired both by contemporaries such as Evelyn Waugh and Rudyard Kipling and more recently by Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry, Douglas Adams, J. K. Rowling, and John Le Carré.

“You don't analyze such sunlit perfection, you just bask in its warmth and splendor…”

—Stephen Fry