Evelyn Waugh
Waugh, Evelyn Arthur St. John - ēvˈlĭn, sĭnˈjən wô, 1903–66, English writer, considered the greatest satirist of his generation. Educated at Oxford, he was briefly an art student and a teacher but spent much of his time traveling. He served with distinction in World War II. Waugh burst upon the literary scene with a group of hilarious novels Read More...
Waugh, Evelyn Arthur St. John - ēvˈlĭn, sĭnˈjən wô, 1903–66, English writer, considered the greatest satirist of his generation. Educated at Oxford, he was briefly an art student and a teacher but spent much of his time traveling. He served with distinction in World War II. Waugh burst upon the literary scene with a group of hilarious novels satirizing 20th-century life with savage and sophisticated wit; they include Decline and Fall (1928), Vile Bodies (1930), and A Handful of Dust (1934). He was even more mordantly satiric in Black Mischief (1932) and Scoop (1938), both treating Africa, and Put Out More Flags (1942), a fictional comment on the English war effort. His most popular novel, Brideshead Revisited (1945), recounts the spiritual regeneration of a wealthy Catholic family. In a novella, The Loved One (1948), he examined the mortuary customs of Hollywood, Calif. Collectively known as The Sword of Honour Trilogy, his three World War II novels, Men at Arms (1952), Officers and Gentlemen (1955), and The End of the Battle (1961), display Waugh's customary ironic wit tempered by a mood of melancholic elegy and are among the finest fictional portrayals of the conflict. In addition to these and other works of fiction, he wrote amusing travel books, biographies of Rossetti (1928) and Edmund Campion (1935), and the autobiographical A Little Learning (1964). All reflect his superb command of the English language. Though labeled an archconservative snob by some critics, Waugh was essentially a moralist who devoted himself to attacking social institutions and customs with impersonal scorn. See his letters, ed. by M. Amory (1980); correspondence with Nancy Mitford (1997), ed. by C. Mosley; biographies by his brother Alec (1968), M. Stannard (2 vol., 1987–92), S. Hastings (1995), J. H. Wilson (1996), D. W. Patey (1998), and D. Wykes (1999); studies by J. F. Carens (1966), P. A. Doyle (1969), W. J. Cook (1971), D. Lodge (1971), and D. Price-Jones (1973). Waugh's older brother, Alec Waugh, 1898–1981, was the author of numerous novels and travel books. Among his best-known works are The Loom of Youth (1918), Island in the Sun (1956), and The Fatal Gift (1973). Waugh's son, Auberon Alexander Waugh, 1939–2000, was a novelist, journalist, and critic known for his satiric wit, curmudgeonly attitudes, and sparkling prose. Many of his ferociously clever and contrarion columns were published in Britain's Spectator and Private Eye. His five novels include The Foxglove Saga (1960) and Consider the Lilies (1968). He wrote of himself and his family in Will This Do?, his 1998 autobiography. See N. R. Galli, ed., Four Crowded Years: The Diaries of Auberon Waugh, 1972–1976 (1976) and A. Galli-Pahlavi, ed., Diaries of Auberon Waugh, 1976–1985: A Turbulent Decade (1985). The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright© 2004, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products N.V. All rights reserved. |
Evelyn Waugh
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This set comprises 40 volumes covering nineteenth and twentieth century European and American authors. These volumes will be available as a complete set, mini boxed sets (by theme) or as individual volumes. This second set compliments the first 68 voulme set of Critical Heritage published by Routledge in October 1995.
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Aldous Huxley, Evelyn Waugh, and Birth Control in Black Mischief, in Journal of Modern Literature
by Jerome Meckier. 14 pgs.
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The Creative Element: A Study of Vision, Despair, and Orthodoxy Among Some Modern Writers (Chap. IX "The World of Evelyn Waugh")
by Stephen Spender. 202 pgs.
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The Columbia History of the British Novel ("Satire between the Wars: Evelyn Waugh and Others" begins on pg. 867)
by John J. Richetti, John Bender, Deirdre David, Michael Seidel. 1066 pgs.
What do Pamela, Shamela, and Evelina have in common? Who is Coningsby? Where is The Moonstone? When does one need A Room of One's Own? Why is it that Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit? And just how good is the British novel? These are just a few of the questions answered in The Columbia History of the British Novel. John Richetti's comprehensive history takes us from the birth of the novel in the eighteenth century through its social and culture-conscious growing pains in the nineteenth century to its angst-ridden maturity in the twentieth century. Concise, cohesive, and complementary to any collection of must-read classics, The Columbia History of the British Novel challenges and enlightens us by examining canonical writers as well as women and postcolonial novelists. Discover the origins of the novel in the "scandalous" books of Aphra Behn, Eliza Haywood, and Delarivier Manley and follow its development through Samuel Richardson, Henry Fielding, and Laurence Sterne against the backdrop of the novel's meteoric rise in the 1700s. Follow Frances Burney and the rise of the woman novelist, and the gothic novel as invented by Horace Walpole and perfected by Mary Shelley and Matthew Lewis. Remember remarkable reunions in Jane Austen; the bond between chivalry, Waverley, and Sir Walter Scott; the Brontes, Amelia Opie, Maria Edgeworth, and the tradition of Romantic women's fiction; Charles Dickens and the professionalization of literature; George Eliot and the novel of ideas; and Wilkie Collins and the sensation mania of the 1860s. Continue through the nineteenth century with the "Condition of England" novels of Benjamin Disraeli and Elizabeth Gaskell, Hardy's tales of class and sexualdifference, and Anglo-Indian perspectives on the empire from Rudyard Kipling and Philip Meadows Taylor. Enter the twentieth century and examine the modern novel with Joseph Conrad, James Joyce, and Virginia Woolf. Then trace the anti-
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Encounters: An Anthology ("An Open Letter to the Hon. Mrs. Peter Rodd (Nancy Mitford) on a Very Serious Subject" begins on pg. 169)
by Stephen Spender, Melvin J. Lasky, Irvin Kristol. 562 pgs.
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Monsignor Ronald Knox, Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford: And Protonotary Apostolic to His Holiness Pope Pius XII
by Evelyn Waugh. 362 pgs.
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In 1946 Evelyn Waugh travelled to Hollywood to discuss with MGM executives the possibility of developing one or more novels into films. The trip allowed Waugh to escape from personal and professional impasses that had resulted in a long-standing case of writers' block, benefitting his career as a novelist more than his career in film. In Hollywood, he discovered not only an eccentric group of expatriates and some odd, if less colorful Americans, but also, in Forest Law Memorial Park, "a deep mine of literary gold." He returned to England to write "The Loved One," a book based on the Los Angeles trip, reviving his reputation among the critics, who had disliked "Brideshead Revisited," his previous effort. Back in Hollywood more than a decade later, MGM, with the help of a team of writers that included Luis Bunuel and Terry Southern, turned the book into a movie. While the movie was a critical failure, this production reveals a great deal about the weakness of the Hollywood system and the pop-culture fringes of the Black Humor school. Davis relied heavily on the Evelyn Waugh collection at the University of Texas-Austin and from the Motion Picture Academy Library for material for the book. In the past 20 years he has written or edited more than nine books about Waugh.
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Classics and Commercials: A Literary Chronicle of the Forties ("Never Apologize, Never Explain: The Art of Evelyn Waugh" begins on pg.140)
by Edmund Wilson. 536 pgs.
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