Best Selling Books by Evelyn Waugh

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.

Brideshead Revisited harkens back to the perceived ''golden age'' prior to World War II. In these halcyon days, Charles Ryder is infatuated with the Marchmains and the rapidly-disappearing world of privilege they inhabit. Enchanted first by Sebastian at Oxford, then by his doomed Catholic family, in particular his remote sister, Julia, Charles comes finally to recognize only his spiritual and social distance from them.

Selected by Modern Library as one of the 100 best novels of the century, this "absolutely delightful" novel (New York Times) movingly and comically chronicles the breakdown of a marriage and the disintegration of English society in the years after World War I. After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last has grown bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. In a novel that combines tragedy, comedy, and savage irony, Evelyn Waugh indelibly captures the irresponsible mood of the "crazy and sterile generation" between the wars.

William Boot, a young man who lives in genteel poverty, far from the iniquities of London, contributes nature notes to Lord Copper’s Daily Beast, a national daily newspaper. He is dragooned into becoming a foreign correspondent, when the editors mistake him for John Courtney Boot, a fashionable novelist and a remote cousin. He is sent to Ishmaelia, a fictional state in East Africa, to report on the crisis there. Lord Copper believes it “a very promising little war” and proposes “to give it fullest publicity”. Despite his total ineptitude, Boot accidentally gets the journalistic “scoop” of the title. When he returns, the credit goes to the other Boot and William is left to return to his bucolic pursuits, much to his relief.

"Evelyn Waugh kept a diary almost continuously from the age of seven until a year before his death in 1966. Extracts from the diaries caused sensation when they were published by the ''Observer''. They are a unique literary document of 300,000 words which provide the background to the novels which made Waugh famous, and gives a continuously sharp and baleful view of the social history of our times. The Diaries throw new light not only on Waugh''s work, but on the character of a puzzling, cantankerous and formidable man." --Publisher description.

"A work of art as rich and subtle and unnerving as anything [Waugh] has ever done," satirizing 1940s California and the Anglo-American cultural divide ( New Yorker). 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. "Fiendishly entertaining."— New York Times "As a piece of writing it is nearly faultless; as satire it is an act of devastation." — The New Republic "Mr. Waugh''s treatment of his macabre material is uninhibited, and wickedly funny . . . as sadistic, playful, and decisive as a cat''s paw on a mouse." ―Alice S. Morris, New York Times Book Review

Fueled by idealism and eagerness to contribute to the war effort, Guy Crouchback becomes attached to a commando unit undergoing training on the Hebridean isle of Mugg, where the whisky flows freely and respect must be paid to the laird. But the comedy of Mugg is soon followed by the bitterness of Crete, where chaos reigns and a difficult evacuation must be accomplished.—Goodreads.com.

"A wickedly witty and iridescent novel" satirizes the generation of "Bright Young Things"—rich young people who dominated London high society in the 1920s ( Time ). Roaring Twenties London was the place to be—at least for the wealthy and well-connected of Great Britain. With the gossip columns recording everything from their parties to their scandals, writer Adam Fenwick-Symes and his glamorous, aristocratic fiancée Nina Blount, along with an assortment of eccentric characters, explore the capricious excesses and forbidden pleasures of a life lived before the public eye—where innocence mixes with sophistication and yields shocking results. From Evelyn Waugh, "one of the most exhilarating stylists" of the twentieth century ( Newsweek), Vile Bodies reveals the darkness and vulnerability beneath the sparkling surface of society. "Vile Bodies may shock you, but it will make you laugh." — The New York Times

Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh, first published in 1928. It was Waugh''s first published novel; an earlier attempt, titled The Temple at Thatch, was destroyed by Waugh while still in manuscript form. Decline and Fall is based in part on Waugh''s schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales. It is a social satire that employs the author''s characteristic black humour in lampooning various features of British society in the 1920s.

Evelyn Waugh was a loving Husband, a wise and affectionate father and the funniest English novelist of the century. This selection of letters does full justice to these splendid attribute''s " Phillip Toynbee.

The account of a tropical journey through British Guiana and part of Brazil.

Evelyn Waugh''s personal favorite of his novels and "a superlatively well done book" set in the age of Emperor Constantine ( Chicago Tribune). Helena is the intelligent, horse-mad daughter of a British chieftain who is thrown into marriage with the man who will one day become the Roman emperor Constantius. Leaving home for lands unknown, she spends her adulthood seeking truth in the religions, mythologies, and philosophies of the declining ancient world, and becomes initiated into Christianity just as it is recognized as the religion of the Roman Empire. Helena—a novel that Evelyn Waugh considered to be his favorite, and most ambitious, work—deftly traverses the forces of corruption, treachery, enlightenment, and political intrigue of Imperial Rome as it brings to life an inspiring heroine. "In Helena, the play of words and the fireworks, the exquisite descriptions of landscapes, and even the finished portraits of the heroine, her husband, and her son, are always subordinate to the author''s broad vision of the mixed anguish and hope with which the world of Constantine''s time was filled." — New York Herald Tribune

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.

Evelyn Waugh''s satiric World War II trilogy comprises the acclaimed novels Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender. This narrative spanning the war, based in part on Evelyn Waugh''s own experiences as an army officer, is the author''s surpassing achievement as a novelist. Its central character is Guy Crouchback, head of an ancient but decayed Catholic family, who at first discovers new purpose in the challenge to defend Christian values against Nazi barbarism, but then gradually finds the complexities and cruelties of war overwhelming. Though often somber, Sword of Honor is also a brilliant comedy, peopled by the fantastic figures so familiar from Waugh''s early satires. The deepest pleasures these novels afford come from observing a great satirist employ his gifts with extraordinary subtlety, delicacy, and human feeling, for purposes that are ultimately anything but humorous.

Waugh brings some of his best characters back for another romp. Against the backdrop of the Phoney War, Alistair Trumpington wants only the chance to fight for a worthy cause, but instead he finds himself stuck in a never-ending series of military maneuvers, getting him nowhere closer to any front.Meanwhile, the scoundrel Basil Seal sees the burgeoning war as an opportunity to help only himself.