Researchers have discovered a huge trove of works by PG Wodehouse, languishing in a newspaper archive in Leeds. Experts working for the Wodehouse Reclamation Project uncovered the work in The Globe and Traveller evening paper from 1901 to 1903.

The writer, aged 20 at the time, and a full-time assistant, later became editor of the "By the Way" series. Featured on the front page of the newspaper, the columns ran at about a dozen paragraphs and included more than 500 poems believed to have been written by Wodehouse. One, "The Unusual Lament", has been published on the project's website.

Wodehouse's newspaper work had never been reprinted before the discovery on microfilm in the British newspaper archive at Boston Spa, Leeds.

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Researcher John Dawson said the works bore "the unmistakable stylistic traits and construction typical of Wodehouse".

"The verses are being collected for a potential book project, and it is our hope that they can be shared with the public within the next couple of years," he said.