The Gold Bat is a novel

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...

, first published on 13 September 1904 by Adam & Charles Black, 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...

. Set at the fictional public school

Public School (UK)

A public school, in common British usage, is a school that is neither administered nor financed by the state or from taxpayer contributions, and is instead funded by a combination of endowments, tuition fees and charitable contributions, usually existing as a non profit-making charitable trust...

 of Wrykyn, the novel tells of how two boys, O'Hara and Moriarty, tar and feather a statue of the local M.P.

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 as a prank. They get away with it, but O'Hara had borrowed a tiny gold cricket bat

Cricket bat

A cricket bat is a specialised piece of equipment used by batsmen in the sport of cricket to hit the ball. It is usually made of willow wood. Its use is first mentioned in 1624....

 belonging to Trevor, the captain of the cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 team, and after the escapade he discovers the trinket is missing. Schoolboy honour is at stake, and the book covers events that term including inter-house rugby

Rugby football

Rugby football is a style of football named after Rugby School in the United Kingdom. It is seen most prominently in two current sports, rugby league and rugby union.-History:...

 matches and the appearance of a mysterious society called the League, as Trevor and friends try to get the gold bat back.

Wrykyn School would appear again in The White Feather

The White Feather

The White Feather is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published on 9 October 1907 by Adam & Charles Black, London. It is set at Wrykyn school, scene of Wodehouse's earlier book The Gold Bat , and the later Mike . Like many early Wodehouse novels, the story first appeared as a serial in the boys'...

(1907), and as the setting of the first half of Mike

Mike (novel)

Mike is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published on 15 September 1909 by Adam & Charles Black, London. The story first appeared in the magazine The Captain, in two separate parts, collected together in the original version of the book; the first part, originally called Jackson Junior, was...

 (1909); it would be mentioned occasionally in later Wodehouse works.

External links

• The Russian Wodehouse Society's page, with photos of book covers and list of characters.
• Free eBook of The Gold Bat at Project Gutenberg
  Project Gutenberg
  Project 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...