author
H. W. (Herbert Wetton) Westbrook
Best known as one of P. G. Wodehouse’s earliest collaborators, this elusive writer helped shape the comic world around the “By the Way” column and the novel Not George Washington. Even with so little personal detail surviving, his connection to Wodehouse gives him a small but fascinating place in literary history.
1 Audiobook
Not George Washington — an Autobiographical Novel
by P. G. (Pelham Grenville) Wodehouse, H. W. (Herbert Wetton) Westbrook
About the author
Little is firmly recorded about Herbert Wetton Westbrook’s life, but reliable sources agree that he was an early collaborator of P. G. Wodehouse and that he died on March 22, 1959. He is also referred to as Herbert Wotton Westbrook, which helps explain why he can be hard to track in catalogs and reference works.
Westbrook is best remembered for working with Wodehouse during the years of the “By the Way” column for The Globe. The two also wrote together, including the semi-autobiographical 1907 novel Not George Washington and The Globe By the Way Book in 1908. Some reference sources also note that Westbrook influenced parts of Wodehouse’s fictional world, including names and character ideas that later became memorable in Wodehouse’s novels.
Because so few biographical details seem to have survived, Westbrook remains a shadowy figure. Still, for readers interested in Wodehouse’s early career, he is an intriguing behind-the-scenes presence: a collaborator, comic partner, and one of the people who stood close to the making of a major humorist.