Ukridge

The Ukridge series consists of one novel, Love Among the Chickens, and nineteen short stories.

It primarily features the titular character, Stanley Featherstonehaugh Ukridge, and is narrated by James "Corky" Corcoran in all but the novel.

Chronology
Although Wodehouse’s other three major series (Jeeves, Blandings, and Psmith) are either linear, largely linear, or have their own delineated timeline, the chronology of Ukridge is a bit more disordered. The first entry in the series, Love Among the Chickens, is not the first chronologically, as Ukridge is married to Millie in it; and Ukridge is explicitly a bachelor throughout the ten-story Ukridge anthology until he marries Millie in “Nasty Corner”.

The nine short stories that follow, however, are more ambiguous. Millie goes completely unmentioned in them, as do any events from “Nasty Corner” or Chickens. “A Bit of Luck for Mabel” and “Ukridge and the Old Stepper” both concern past ill-fated love affairs of Ukridge, so they must at the very least be set after “First Aid for Dora,” in which Corky expresses that he always assumed Ukridge had no interest in women. Time itself has marched forward in those late stories, as the Ukridge anthology is set during the early 1900s, but “The Come-back of Battling Billson” is explicitly set after the advent of talkies in the late 1920s. However, it is characteristic of Wodehouse’s series for internal story chronology and real-world time not to match up, given that the Jeeves series spans less than ten years despite its real-world referential runtime being more than half a century. Ultimately, it remains unclear whether those nine stories are meant to be prequels to “Nasty Corner”, or are set at some undefined point afterward in which Millie is strangely absent.

It is also worth noting that the Ukridge anthology makes use of a subtle framing device. Corky mentions in his narration that “Ukridge Sees Her Through” took place before the time of tortoiseshell-rimmed spectacles, an element of fashion that became quite popular in the 1920s. Indeed, several references to time and place suggest that the stories are set in the early 1900s. Thus, the anthology is being written some twenty years after the events. However, this framing device seems to have been forgotten or dispensed with by the time we reach “A Bit of Luck for Mabel”, because Ukridge asking Corky to title it suggests he is aware that Corky is writing stories about him, while the framing device of “Dog College” suggests that he has not written any stories until these two-decade-late reminiscences.