Brideshead Revisited: Popular Penguins

“Waugh’s most deeply felt novel … “Brideshead Revisited “tells an absorbing story in imaginative terms … Mr. Waugh is very definitely an artist, with something like a genius for precision and clarity not surpassed by any novelist writing in English in his time.” -“New York Times”
“A many-faceted book … Beautifully [written] by one of the most exhilarating stylists of our time.” -“Newsweek”
“First and last an enchanting story … “Brideshead Revisited” has a magic that is rare in current literature. It is a world in itself, and the reader lives in it and is loath to leave it when the last page is turned.” -“Saturday Review”
“Evelyn Waugh’s most successful novel … A memorable work of art.”
-from the Introduction by Frank Kermode

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903, the second son of Arthur Waugh, a publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, a popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History.

In 1928, he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall. This was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934), and Scoop (1938).

During these years, Waugh travelled extensively throughout Europe, the Near East, Africa, and tropical America, and published several travel books, including Labels (1930), Remote People (1931), Ninety-Two Days (1934), and Waugh in Abyssinia (1936).

In 1939, he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to the Royal Horse Guards, serving in the Middle East and Yugoslavia. In 1942, he published Put Out More Flags, followed by Brideshead Revisited in 1945. When the Going was Good and The Loved One preceded Men at Arms (1952), the first volume of ‘The Sword of Honour’ trilogy, which won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize. The other volumes, Officers and Gentlemen and Unconditional Surrender, were published in 1955 and 1961, respectively. In 1964, he published his last book, A Little Learning, the first volume of his autobiography.

Waugh was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1930. His biography of the Elizabethan Jesuit martyr, Edmund Campion, was awarded the Hawthornden Prize in 1936. In 1959, he published the official Life of Ronald Knox. For many years, he lived with his wife and six children in the West Country. He died in 1966.

Waugh stated of his work: “I regard writing not as investigation of character but as an exercise in the use of language, and with this I am obsessed. I have no technical psychological interest. It is drama, speech and events that interest me.”

Mark Amory described Evelyn Waugh as “one of the five best novelists in the English language this century,” while Harold Acton characterized him as having “the sharp eye of a Hogarth alternating with that of the Ancient Mariner.”

This item is eligible for free returns within 30 days of delivery. See our returns policy for further details.