Jill The Reckless is a novel by P. G. Wodehouse, first published in the United States on October 11, 1920 by George H. Doran, New York, (under the title The Little Warrior), and in the United Kingdom by Herbert Jenkins, London, on 4 July 1921. It was serialised in Collier's (US) between 10 April and 28 August 1920, in Maclean's (Canada) between 1 August and 15 November 1920, in both cases as The Little Warrior, and, as Jill the Reckless, in the Grand Magazine (UK), from September 1920 to June 1921.
The heroine here, Jill Mariner, is a young woman from the lower end of the upper class. We follow her through financial disaster, a broken engagement, an awkward stay with some grasping relatives, employment as a chorus girl, and of course, the finding of true love.
Other characters include wealthy clubman Freddie Rooke and dramatist Wally Mason, her childhood friends; her financially inept uncle Major Christopher Selby; her fiancé at the beginning of the book, the M.P Derek Underhill, and his domineering mother, Lady Underhill; Jill's unpleasant Long Island, N.Y. relatives, Elmer, Julia and Tibby Mariner; Drones Club member Algy Martyn, various chorus girls, composers and other theatrical types, and, of course, miscellaneous servants.
George Bevan, composer hero of Wodehouse's previous work A Damsel in Distress, receives a passing mention, as does an unspecified member of the Threepwood family.
The dust jacket of the UK first edition published by Herbert Jenkins was designed by Edmund Blampied.
Famous quotes containing the words jill and/or reckless:
“Jack and Jill
Went up the hill,
To fetch a pail of water;
Jack fell down,
And broke his crown,
And Jill came tumbling after.”
—Mother Goose (fl. 17th–18th century. Jack and Jill (l. 1–6)
“If the veil were withdrawn from the sanctuary of domestic life, and man could look upon the fear, the loathing, the detestations which his tyranny and reckless gratification of self has caused to take the place of confiding love, which placed a woman in his power, he would shudder at the hideous wrong of the present regulations of the domestic abode.”
—Lydia Jane Pierson, U.S. women’s rights activist and corresponding editor of The Woman’s Advocate. The Woman’s Advocate, represented in The Lily, pp. 117-8 (1855-1858 or 1860)