Wodehouse said letters make "a wonderful oblique form for an autobiography," and Sophie Ratcliffe's expertly edited collection amply proves the point.

Anybody requiring evidence of how much work PG Wodehouse put into his comic prose should read his letters. In her introduction to this definitive compendium of Wodehouse's correspondence, Sophie Ratcliffe warns that [the letters] display only on occasions the extraordinary stylistic elan that one finds in fiction. Indeed they do, although when the extraordinary elan bubbles briefly to the surface, it is worth waiting for. But Wodehouse was a dedicated craftsman. He wanted his published words to make people laugh, and he devoted hour after hour to making them fit that purpose. One suspects his personal epistles were often a happy relief from that discipline.

The great catastrophe of his life was of course, his broadcasting from Berlin in 1941, a slur on his reputation that never quite went goes away however often it is expunged. The whole saga is unravelled again here in Sophie Ratcliffe's excellent linking narrative.

Filtered by some excellent editing, [these letters] are full of interest

Sophie Ratcliffe has done an exemplary job in editing these letters

Ratcliffe sees him through to the end with affection. Hers is a model edition, tracing the rise and fall of a writer who allowed his imagined world to eclipse the real

This authoritative edition of generous selections - from "Plum's" prolific pen, from schooldays at Dulwich College in 1899 throughout his long Anglo-American career as a novelist and musical comedy lyricist to his last letters from Long Island in 1975 - is acutely attuned to his contradictions of character and his desire to please at the expense of absolute veracity. The letters, gossipy in the kindliest, amused/bemused manner, bear true witness to the wide-ranging influences on Wodehouse's' best-known novels and best-loved characters.

In this new collection . . . Sophie Ratcliffe has rolled up her sleeves and waded into the fray . . . she has succeeded marvellously. When it comes to the world of Wodehouse, Ratcliffe knows her stuff. She has embroidered this plump selection of letters with an illuminating but unobtrusive critical apparatus.

A lovely new book

An intriguing picture of a great 20th-century writer . . . In its peculiar English way, it has a strange intimacy, the perverse fruit of Wodehouse's instinctive, Jeevesian, discretion.

They give real insight into the man behind Jeeves­ ­­and Wooster

Improbably beautiful

A gripping yet tender storyline that unfolds as the insurmountable obstacles are faced with bravery and loyalty. You're sure to be reaching for the tissues

A moving and disturbing tale of love and loyalty. And you might cry

A treat of a read, not least because of the wonderful, rolling ease with which Lodge writes. Or, rather, with which it reads - prose like this does not come without effort.

Sex-charged whopper on the life and works of HG Wells

Colourful characters and outrageous events abound. Confident, pacy writing keeps the reader wondering what Wells will get up to next and pondering the complex relationships to which he seems addicted

Very, very good.... So confidently are facts and flights of imaginative fancy interwoven that readers will find themselves unwilling - and unable - to distinguish between the two

Consistently absorbing and enjoyable. I doubt whether a better way could have been found to bring the phenomenon that was H. G. Wells to life

Biographical fiction is on an upswing, to judge by this lively novel, faithful to the facts but free to interpret feelings

A Man of Parts has the lovely, loquacious qualities that typify eccentric wonders such as The War of the Worlds and The History of Mr Polly. David Lodge reminds us that Wells, an imperfect man, is still a worthy witness to his own world and to those worlds that may yet to come.

Lodge understands the Edwardian literary and political scene extremely well, and traces Wells's entanglements with the louche world of Fabians and free lovers with real intimacy

As protean, elusive but compelling as it's hero, David Lodge's bio-novel about HG Wells breaks all the rules but still grips the reader - like Wells himself

A wry, racy and absorbing biographical novel

Lodge knows how to tease the inner man out from behind the historical figure, subjecting Wells to probing interviews throughout the book in which his deeper beliefs and contradictions are laid bare

This fictionalised version of HG Wells dramatises the author's life, which was full of politics, writing and women

David Lodge's HG Wells was both a visionary and a chancer; as arrogant as he was insecure; with as many noble goals as base instincts; a mass of very human contradictions; as Lodge has it, a man of parts