Jeeves always had the answer that Bertie needed, and an internet search engine named AskJeeves, in which users searched in the form of a question, appeared in 1997. After a short life, it disappeared in the early 2000s, eventually rebranding as the site, Ask, still online today.
Jeeves is a fictional character in a series of comedic short stories and novels by English author P.G. Wodehouse. Jeeves is the highly competent valet of a wealthy and idle young Londoner named Bertie Wooster.
The two first appeared in Extricating Young Gussie, a short story published in the US in September 1915, although the first fully recognisable Jeeves and Wooster story was Leave It to Jeeves, published in early 1916.
As Bertie Wooster’s valet, Jeeves lives with him, usually in Wooster’s London residence at Berkeley Mansions. Jeeves frequently extricates Bertie from unwanted engagements and assists Bertie’s friends and relatives with various dilemmas and the pair experience a variety of adventures spanning 35 short stories and 11 novels.
Jeeves is known for his precise speech and for quoting from Shakespeare and famous romantic poets. He has command of a vast range of subjects and an encyclopaedic knowledge of poetry, science, history, psychology, geography, politics, and literature, and is a “bit of a whizz” in all matters pertaining to gambling, car maintenance, etiquette, and women. However, his two most impressive feats are a flawless knowledge of the British aristocracy and the skill of making antidotes (especially for hangovers).
Sir Pelham Grenville Wodehouse, KBE, was a comic writer who enjoyed enormous popular success during a career of more than seventy years and continues to be widely read over 40 years after his death. His main canvas was that of pre-war English upper-class society, reflecting his birth, education, and youthful writing career.
After his first appearance in 1915, the Jeeves and Wooster characters continued to feature in Wodehouse’s work until his last completed novel Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen in 1974, a span of 60 years.