Evelyn Waugh was the last of the great letter-writers, and his witty, elegant correspondence to a wide circle of friends contains more than a touch of malice. In the 1920s Waugh wrote to a schoolfriend about his undergraduate escapades at Oxford and the Harold Acton and Henry Green of his unhappy jobs, his literary plans and the break-up of his first marriage. In the 1930s his boisterous letters recount his successes, social life and travels in South America. During the war, writing to his second wife, Laura Herbert, he revealed the strength of his love for her more vividly than has appeared elsewhere. He was inspired by Ann Fleming, Lady Diana Cooper and Nancy Mitford. Politics are rarely mentioned and he discusses writing only with someone he recognises as an equal, like Graham Greene. His deeply felt religious beliefs are expressed to John Betjeman. But Waugh's main concern is to amuse - and in this he is triumphantly successful.
Collected for the first time in a single volume: all of the short fiction by one of the 20th century's wittiest and most trenchant observers of the human comedy.
A work of art as rich and subtle and unnerving as anything its author has ever done" (New Yorker), The Loved One is Evelyn Waugh's cutting satire of 1940s California and the Anglo-American cultural divide. Following the death of a friend, the poet and pets' mortician Dennis Barlow finds himself entering the artificial Hollywood paradise of the Whispering Glades Memorial Park. Within its golden gates, death, American-style, is wrapped up and sold like a package holiday--and Dennis gets drawn into a bizarre love triangle with Aimée Thanatogenos, a naïve Californian corpse beautician, and Mr. Joyboy, a master of the embalmer's art. Waugh's dark and savage satire depicts a world where reputation, love, and death cost a very great deal.
This volume is part of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh critical edition, which brings together all of Waugh's writings for the first time. Waugh's only historical novel, Helena is the story of the mother of Emperor Constantine and her reputed discovery of the 'True Cross'.
Black Mischief was Evelyn Waugh’s third novel, published in 1932. The novel chronicles the efforts of the English-educated Emperor Seth, assisted by a fellow Oxford graduate, Basil Seal, to modernize his Empire, the fictional African island of Azania, located in the Indian Ocean off the eastern coast of Africa. Hilarity ensues from the issuance of homemade currency, the staging of a “Birth Control Gala,” the rightful ruler’s demise at his own rather long and tiring coronation ceremonies, and a good deal more mischief.
British expatriate Dennis Barlow is an aspiring poet who composes by day and works by night at the Happier Hunting Ground, a local pet cemetery. By chance he is called on to arrange a funeral for a fellow Brit (a victim of the movie industry) at the respendent Whispering Glades Cemetery, where he meets Aimée Thanatogenos, the beautiful junior cosmetician, and Mr Joyboy, the senior mortician, and the plot shifts into hilarious high gear.
This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.
This volume is part of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh critical edition, which brings together all Waugh's published and previously unpublished writings for the first time with comprehensive introductions and annotation, and a full account of each text's manuscript development and textual variants. The edition's General Editor is Alexander Waugh, Evelyn Waugh's grandson and editor of the twelve-volume Personal Writings sequence.'A wicked book', one reviewer called it. Evelyn Waugh's eighth novel, The Loved One (1948), represents a return to the pungent satirical manner from which its predecessor Brideshead Revisited, three years earlier, had deviated. The prospect of Brideshead being turned into a film took its author to Los Angeles, where he became more interested in Forest Lawn Memorial-Park and its funeral rites than in Hollywood and its dreams of immortality. Or rather, 'obsessed' (his word) about the relations between them. Around these twin industries he spun a macabre fiction about an English poet and failed scriptwriter, an ingenuous young American beautician, and the master mortician for whom she works. A strong supporting cast features the English ex-patriate community and the Hollywood Cricket Club, the movie moguls and their henchmen, and the devotees serving the fictional 'Whispering Glades'. The resulting story is one of Waugh's funniest, yet it harbours an underlying gravity about the way the world (or the West) was going in the aftermath of global war. The Loved One is deeply coloured by memories of war. It may be concerned with the world of appearances to which Hollywood and Forest Lawn were dedicated, but this does not make it superficial. On the contrary. Waugh subtitled it 'An Anglo-American Tragedy', but it can be just as well understood as the most mordant of comedies, closer to the world of Samuel Beckett than of P. G. Wodehouse. Or better, an improbable combination of the two.
Evelyn Waugh was widely loved as one of the funniest and most irreverent writers of his day. This is a collection of his quotes on a range of subjects including religion, morals, manners, journalism, food and travel.
Brideshead Revisited details the journey of Charles Ryder, who, through the memories of his interactions with an aristocratic English family, encounters various episodes of conversion and experiences the illuminating power of divine grace--which, in the words of G.K. Chesterton, tugs on human hearts "with a twitch upon the thread." Lodged between two world wars and burdened by the stark collapse of culture, Charles Ryder comes face to face with the perils of sin and confronts the inescapable yearnings of faith.
Waugh begins his story with heredity, writing of the energetic, literary and sometimes eccentric men and women who, unknown to themselves, contributed to his genius.
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