person concerned. This occurs in chapter 2: "It was plain that I had shaken him. His eyes widened, and an astonished piece of toast fell from his grasp". Background The expression "in the offing", used in the novel's title for the UK edition, describes something that is likely to happen or arrive soon. The earliest extant notes for the novel, written by Wodehouse in November 1956, show that he initially planned for the plot to have Aunt Dahlia and Uncle Tom away in America, while Aunt Agatha and Lord Worplesdon were staying at Brinkley Court. This preliminary plot involves an American millionaire and the theft of the silver cow-creamer, similar to the final story, as well as Bertie reading in the paper of his engagement to someone, though it is to a girl whom he has never met. The notes indicate that Wodehouse determined some of the basic parts of the plot before deciding on the specific characters as placeholders are in place of character names, as in the following note: "X wants to marry Y, gets B. to say he is engd. to Y. Formidable mother." After dropping the project in December 1956, Wodehouse resumed working on it in early 1958. In August 1958, he composed a list of characters, which includes several characters not present in the final version of the book. These characters include Uncle Tom's sister, Judson Coker (a character from Wodehouse's 1924 novel Bill the Conqueror), and Edwin the Boy Scout (the troublesome young brother of Florence Craye), who would have acted as a detective. A surviving late draft for the novel shows some small changes made by Wodehouse to make Bertie's language more comical and elaborate. For example, in the sentence, "His blood pressure was high [, his eye rolled in what they call a fine frenzy,] and he was death-where-is-thy-sting-ing like nobody's business", the clause in brackets was inserted. Like in Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit, there is a reference in the book to David Niven, the actor who portrayed Bertie Wooster in the earlier 1936 film Thank You, Jeeves!. In the novel, Bertie describes the suspected playboy Wilbert Cream as resembling David Niven. Publication history This story appeared in three magazines under the title How Right You Are, Jeeves. First, the story was serialized from 29 August to 19 September 1959 in the British magazine John Bull magazine, illustrated by Richard O.