My Man Jeeves (1919) is the first in a series of sixteen immensely popular books by P. G. Wodehouse featuring the unflappable character of Reginald Jeeves, valet to the wealthy, idle, and often chuckle-headed British aristocrat Bertie Wooster. The volume contains four stories featuring Jeeves and four others. All are narrated by Bertie and take place in the world of the upper class in the years between the world wars in London gentlemen’s clubs, stately English country homes, and the café society of New York in the jazz age. Jeeves is the consummate manservant, a “gentleman’s personal gentleman”, in his own words, with a clear idea of proper dress and comportment, impeccable taste, encyclopedic knowledge of history, literature and the sciences, and a wealth of knowledge of the ways of the world coupled with a lively ingenuity. He serves as Bertie’s all-purpose guardian angel, finding ways to rescue Bertie from suffocating social situations, fashion gaffes, scrapes with the law, overbearing relatives, and problems in dealing with the fair sex, operating discreetly in the background until the inevitable revelations occur. The name Jeeves was borrowed from cricketer Percy Jeeves and the character is said to have been modeled on a butler named Eugene Robinson employed by Wodehouse as a researcher. The Jeeves canon consists of 11 novels and 35 short stories published over a span of 59 years. The character of Carson from Downton Abbey bears more than a passing resemblance to Jeeves, whose name can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary as a generic term for the quintessential nature of a butler or valet. It all started with this book.

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