What ho!

Welcome to Biblia Wodehousiana, an ongoing effort to inventory the biblical quotations and allusions in the works of the English novelist Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse (1881-1975).

This website, which will be under construction for some years to come, was created on 21st September 2003 by a Benedictine monk, Fr Rob Bovendeaard, who has been a devout reader of the Master's canon of holy wit since he was so high.

Its aim is to provide, for each of P G Wodehouse's books, an exhaustive list of the passages containing a quotation from or an allusion to the Bible, and to give the biblical references. Unless otherwise stated, the texts of the Scriptures quoted on this site come from the King James or Authorised Version (1611), which has been the best-known form of the Bible for many generations of English-speaking people and which seems to be the main source of the Master's biblical language. Whenever it is deemed useful, a brief note comments on the meaning of the Bible passage or on its—often very witty—use by P G Wodehouse.

While for various reasons there is no agreement amongst scholars as to how many books Wodehouse actually wrote, we will distinguish, for simplicity's sake, 92 novels and collections of short stories. On this site, they are divided, for practical purposes, into eight decades, which you can access through the menu at the top of each page.