The Girl on the Boat
Encyclopedia
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by P. G. Wodehouse
P. G. Wodehouse
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE was an English humorist, whose body of work includes novels, short stories, plays, poems, song lyrics, and numerous pieces of journalism. He enjoyed enormous popular success during a career that lasted more than seventy years and his many writings continue to be...
. The story first appeared as a serial in Woman's Home Companion
Woman's Home Companion
Woman's Home Companion was an American monthly publication, published from 1873 to 1957. It was highly successful, climbing to a circulation peak of more than four million during the 1930s and 1940s....
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, under the title Three Men and a Maid, from October to December 1921. It was first published as a book in the U.S. on April 26, 1922 by George H. Doran, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, and as The Girl on the Boat in the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
by Herbert Jenkins
Barrie & Jenkins
Barrie & Jenkins was a small British publishing house that was formed in 1964 from the merger of "Herbert Jenkins" and "Barrie & Rockcliffe". One of their most notable authors was P. G...
, London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, on June 15, 1922.
The maid of the title is red-haired, dog-loving Wilhelmina "Billie" Bennet, and the three men are Bream Mortimer, a long-time friend and admirer of Billie, Eustace Hignett, a lily-livered poet who is engaged to Billie at the opening of the tale, and Sam Marlowe, Eustace's dashing cousin, who falls for Billie at first sight. All four find themselves on an ocean liner
Ocean liner
An ocean liner is a ship designed to transport people from one seaport to another along regular long-distance maritime routes according to a schedule. Liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes .Cargo vessels running to a schedule are sometimes referred to as...
headed for England
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
together, along with a capable young woman called Jane Hubbard who is smitten with Eustace, and typically Wodehousian romantic shenanigans ensue
Film adaptation
A film adaptation was made in 19611961 in film
The year 1961 in film involved some significant events, with West Side Story winning 10 Academy Awards.-Top grossing films : After theatrical re-issue- Awards :Academy Awards:* Atlantis, the Lost ContinentB...
, starring Norman Wisdom
Norman Wisdom
Sir Norman Joseph Wisdom, OBE was an English actor, comedian and singer-songwriter best known for a series of comedy films produced between 1953 and 1966 featuring his hapless onscreen character Norman Pitkin...
as Marlowe, Richard Briers
Richard Briers
Richard David Briers, CBE is an English actor whose career has encompassed theatre, television, film and radio.He first came to prominence as George Starling in Marriage Lines in the 1960s, but it was in the following decade when he played Tom Good in the BBC sitcom The Good Life that he became a...
as Eustace, Philip Locke
Philip Locke
Philip Locke was an English actor.He is possibly best known for his role as villainous SPECTRE underling Vargas in the 1965 James Bond film Thunderball...
as Bream Mortimer and Millicent Martin
Millicent Martin
Millicent Mary Lillian Martin is an English actress, singer and comedienne.Martin was born in Romford, England. She made her Broadway debut opposite Julie Andrews in The Boy Friend in 1954...
as Billie. Richard Briers later portrayed another Wodehouse character, Galahad Threepwood
Galahad Threepwood
The Honourable Galahad "Gally" Threepwood is a fictional character in the Blandings stories by P. G. Wodehouse. Lord Emsworth's younger brother, a lifelong bachelor, Gally was, according to Beach, the Blandings butler, "somewhat wild as a young man"...
, in a BBC
BBC
The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...
adaptation of Heavy Weather
Heavy Weather (novel)
Heavy Weather is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on July 28, 1933 by Little, Brown and Company, Boston, and in the United Kingdom on August 10, 1933 by Herbert Jenkins, London...
.
Directed by Henry Kaplan
Henry Kaplan
Henry Kaplan was a television director known for his works on Dark Shadows, Ryan's Hope, The Doctors and All My Children. He also directed seven episodes of the sitcom The Adventures of Aggie.- External links :...
the screenplay was adapted from Wodehouse's original novel by Reuben Ship
Reuben Ship
Reuben Ship was a Canadian playwright and screenwriter best known for his 1954 radio satire The Investigator, which lampooned the Army-McCarthy Hearings and the anticommunist paranoia of the Second Red Scare.-Biography:...
. Some scenes from the novel, such as Sam Marlowe's performance at the ship's concert, are not included in the film. The romance between Eustace and Jane Hubbard (played by Sheila Hancock
Sheila Hancock
Sheila Cameron Hancock, CBE is an English actress and author.-Early life:Sheila Hancock was born in Blackgang on the Isle of Wight, the daughter of Ivy Louise and Enrico Cameron Hancock, who was a publican. Her sister Billie is seven years older...
) is also altered; Eustace stands up to his domineering mother in the film, but not in the book.
External links
- The Russian Wodehouse Society's page, with numerous book covers and a list of characters
- Free eBook of Three Men and a Maid at Project GutenbergProject GutenbergProject Gutenberg is a volunteer effort to digitize and archive cultural works, to "encourage the creation and distribution of eBooks". Founded in 1971 by Michael S. Hart, it is the oldest digital library. Most of the items in its collection are the full texts of public domain books...
- Free audiobook of Three Men and a Maid/The Girl on the Boat (1922) at LibriVoxLibriVoxLibriVox is an online digital library of free public domain audiobooks, read by volunteers and is probably, since 2007, the world's most prolific audiobook publisher...
(5h 40m, Ogg-VorbisVorbisVorbis is a free software / open source project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation . The project produces an audio format specification and software implementation for lossy audio compression...
or MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
formats, ZIP of whole book MP3MP3MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III, more commonly referred to as MP3, is a patented digital audio encoding format using a form of lossy data compression...
164 MBMegabyteThe megabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage or transmission with two different values depending on context: bytes generally for computer memory; and one million bytes generally for computer storage. The IEEE Standards Board has decided that "Mega will mean 1 000...
)