If I Were You (Wodehouse novel)
novel by P. G. Wodehouse
If I Were You is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on 3 September 1931 by Doubleday, Doran, New York, and in the United Kingdom on 25 September 1931 by Herbert Jenkins, London.
The novel was based on a play of the same name written by Wodehouse and Guy Bolton.
The story concerns the romantic troubles of young Tony, fifth Earl of Droitwich. Engaged to be married to the beautiful and rich Violet Waddington, Tony finds his life thrown into chaos when his old nurse comes to pay him a visit, revealing a long-kept family secret. Tony departs for London with the resourceful Polly Brown, leaving the ancestral home in the hands of the Socialist barber Syd Price.
The Honourable Freddie Chalk-Marshall, the monocle-wearing younger brother of Lord Droitwich, and Freddie's friend Tubby, Lord Bridgnorth, are both members of the Drones Club.
Plot
Anthony "Tony", fifth Earl of Droitwich, lives at his Worcestershire country house Langley End with his brother the Honourable Frederick "Freddie" Chalk-Marshall, their aunt Lady Lydia Bassinger, and her husband Sir Herbert Bassinger. Tony is engaged to Violet Waddington. The match was essentially arranged by Lady Lydia and Violet's father G. G. Waddington, of Waddington's 97 Soups, for Violet's money and Tony's title. Violet likewise views the engagement in a businesslike way, though Tony is unaware Violet does not love him until Freddie tells him.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “If I Were You (Wodehouse novel)” is novel by P. G. Wodehouse. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Wodehouse and novel, not as a finished interpretation.
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The phrase “novel by P. G. Wodehouse” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q16386239. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1931.
Rights, attribution and provenance may remain disputed even when a general reference summary presents a stable account. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “If I Were You (Wodehouse novel)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.