Origins
Wodehouse frequently named his characters after places with which he was familiar, and Lord Emsworth takes his name from the Hampshire town of Emsworth, where Wodehouse spent some time in the 1890s; he first went there in 1903, at the invitation of his friend Herbert Westbrook, and later took a lease on a house there called "Threepwood Cottage", which name he used as Lord Emsworth's family name. Westbrook worked at a school in the town, and Wodehouse also mentions it in his 1909 novel Mike, as the place where Mike was at school prior to Wrykyn. Some of the many characters who are named after places in the vicinity of Emsworth include Lord Emsworth's heir, Viscount Bosham, Lady Anne Warblington, Lord Stockheath, the Duchess of Havant (in A Gentleman of Leisure), and Lord Arthur Hayling (in The Prince and Betty).
The name "Lord Emsworth" first appears in Wodehouse's works as a passing mention in a short called "The Matrimonial Sweepstakes", a version of "The Good Angel" printed in Cosmopolitan in the U.S. in February 1910. "The Good Angel" as it appears in the 1914 collection The Man Upstairs contains no such mention, although there is a "Lord Stockleigh" involved.
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