Mr. Mulliner - Stories

Stories

The Mulliner stories all employ an unusual structure. At the beginning of each story, an unnamed first-person narrator sets the scene at the Angler's Rest pub, describing the conversation at the bar-parlour. This will lead to Mr. Mulliner entering the conversation, generally elaborating on the conversational theme, and remarking that it reminds him of a story involving a relative. Then, no more than a page or two into the story, Mr. Mulliner effectively takes over the narration of the tale, describing the events that befell the relative in question. In the earlier stories, the unnamed first-person narrator returns very briefly to close out the tale back at the Angler's Rest -- in later stories, the story ends when Mr. Mulliner has concluded it.

Mr. Mulliner himself is rarely a character in the tales he tells. An exception is the story "George and Alfred", in which Mr. Mulliner tries to help out one of his nephews who has been accused of a crime. In this story, we learn that Mr. Mulliner is a friend of Hollywood studio head Jacob Z. Schnellenhammer, and that he has stayed on Schnellenhammer's yacht while it was cruising the Mediterranean. We also learn that Mr. Mulliner's first name, whatever it may be, is not George.

Little else is revealed of Mulliner's character beyond his large family, his choice of beverage, and his hobby of fishing (which he mentions in one story replaced his earlier hobby of golf.) Nevertheless, Mulliner narrates forty-one short stories and three books, containing nine stories each, bear his name:

• Meet Mr Mulliner (1927)
• Mr Mulliner Speaking (1929)
• Mulliner Nights (1933)

The remaining fourteen stories are scattered in other volumes:

• Five in Blandings Castle and Elsewhere (1935)
• Three in Young Men in Spats (1936)
• One in Lord Emsworth and Others (1937) (U.S. title: Crime Wave at Blandings)
• One in Eggs, Beans and Crumpets (1940)
• Two in A Few Quick Ones (1959)
• One in Plum Pie (1966)
• One ("Another Christmas Carol") found only in The World of Mr Mulliner (1972) - an omnibus containing all 41 stories narrated by Mr. Mulliner.

This last volume also contains one additional story, "From a Detective's Notebook". This story is about Adrian Mulliner, who had previously been established as one of Mr. Mulliner's innumerable nephews. Strictly speaking, however, "From A Detective's Notebook" is not a Mr. Mulliner story, as Mr. Mulliner does not narrate it, appear in it, or even receive a mention.

Also note that a handful of what were to become "Mr. Mulliner stories" were originally published in magazines without the framework of Mr. Mulliner telling the story in question. (These include three stories about Bobbie Wickham, as well as one about James Rodman.) When revised for book publication, Wodehouse added the Mulliner openings and narration -- and it is these revised versions which appear in all Mulliner and Wodehouse anthologies to this day. These revised stories can generally be distinguished by Mulliner identifying the prime character of the story as a "distant cousin" (or some other far-flung relation) whose surname is not Mulliner.