Jill the Reckless by WODEHOUSE, P. G.

Jill had money, Jill was engaged to be married to Sir Derek Underhill. Suddenly Jill becomes penniless, and she is no longer engaged. With a smile, in which there is just a tinge of recklessness, she refuses to be beaten and turns to face the world. Instead she went to New York and became a member of the chorus of “The Rose of America,” and Mr. Wodehouse is enabled to lift the curtain of the musical comedy world.

There is laughter and drama in _Jill the Reckless_, and the action never flags from the moment that Freddie Rooke confesses that he has had a hectic night, down to the point where Wally says briefly “Let ’em,” which is page 313. 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 Drone Freddie Rooke and writer Wally Mason, her childhood friends; her financially inept uncle Major Christopher Selby; her fiancée at the beginning of the book, the M.P Derek Underhill, and his domineering mother, Lady Underhill; Jill’s unpleasant relatives, Elmer and Julia Mariner; more Drones Club members, various chorus girls, composers and other theatrical types, and, of course, miscellaneous servants. (Introduction from Gutenberg and Wikipedia)