Pelham Grenville Wodehouse

Pelham Grenville Wodehouse was born in 1881 in Guildford, the son of a civil servant, and educated at Dulwich College. After working for the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank for two years, he left to earn his living as a journalist and storywriter, writing the 'By the Way' column in the old Globe. He also contributed a series of school stories to a magazine for boys, the Captain, in one of which Psmith made his first appearance. Going to America before the First World War, he sold a serial to the Saturday Evening Post, and for the next twenty-five years almost all his books appeared first in this magazine. He was part author and writer of the lyrics of eighteen musical comedies, including Kissing Time.

An enormously popular and prolific writer, he produced about 100 books. In Jeeves, the ever resourceful 'gentleman's personal gentleman', and the good-hearted young blunderer Bertie Wooster, he created two of the best known and best loved characters in twentieth century literature. Their exploits, first collected in Carry On, Jeeves, were chronicled in fourteen books, and have been repeatedly adapted for television, radio and the stage. Wodehouse also created many other comic figures, notably Lord Emsworth, the Hon. Galahad Threepwood, Psmith and the numerous members of the Drones Club. He was part-author and writer of fifteen straight plays and 250 lyrics for some 30 musical comedies. The Times hailed him as a 'comic genius recognized in his lifetime as a classic and an old master of farce'.

P. G. Wodehouse said, 'I believe there are two ways of writing novels. One is mine, making a sort of musical comedy without music and ignoring real life altogether; the other is going right deep down into life and not caring a damn...'

Wodehouse married in 1914 and took American citizenship in 1955. He was created a Knight of the British Empire in the 1 375 New Year's Honours List. In a BBC interview he said that he had no ambitions left now that he had been knighted and there was a waxwork of him in Madame Tussauds. He died on St Valentines Day, 1975, at the age of ninety-three.

Robert Frost (1874-1963).

Early years Robert was born in 1874 in San Francisco, California. When his father died in 1885, the family moved to Massachusetts, where he continued his education. He interrupted his studies before obtaining a college degree and held a number of teaching positions while writing early his poems, the first of which was published in 1894.

Marriage, bereavement, depression Over the next ten years Frost married, wrote mostly unpublished poems, ran a farm and continued teaching. Following the deaths of his son, his mother and his daughter, he fell into a deep depression and seriously contemplated suicide.

England and first published collections In 1912 he moved his family to England, where he made friends with a number of established poets, notably Ezra Pound. With their help, Frost had two works published: the collection of lyrics A Boy's Will (1913) and the series of dramatic monologues North of Boston (1914).

Return to the USA When the First World War broke out the Frost family returned to the USA. The commercial success of his books on both sides of the Atlantic enabled Frost to buy a farm in New England. He dedicated the rest of his life to working on the farm, writing and teaching.

Literary awards Over the years that followed Frost received a great number of literary, academic and public honours and awards, including four Pulitzer Prizes. In 1961 he recited one of his poems at the inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, the first poet to take part in the ceremony in American history. He died in Boston in 1963.

WORKS

Setting Unlike many poets of his age, Frost displayed a complete disinterest in the realities of urban, industrialized society and the social or political themes that inspired his contemporaries. His work is deeply rooted in the life and scenery of rural New England.

Layers of meaning Many Frost's poems have several levels of meaning. They often open with the description of a natural setting, a single person is introduced and an apparently simple story is told: A more profound, at times elusive message, however, is often hidden in the metaphors and inventive imagery. Frost warned his readers not to 'press the poem too hard' for meaning, because as he said, the 'the real meaning is the most obvious meaning'.

Style Stylistically, Frost chose discipline. He disliked free verse, which he described as playing tennis 'with the net down'. He structured his poems in traditional metrical, rhythmical and rhyming schemes, which he used with great skill and subtlety. An important innovation was his use of plain direct, conversational language. He believed the language of common, rural folk best described the ordinary experiences that formed the subject of his work.

Reputation Robert Frost is one of the best loved poets of the twentieth century, He is admired for the blend of the traditional and the colloquial he incorporates into his work, and as a nature poet he is widely regarded as a fitting heir to Wordsworth.