Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh, English Literature, 20th Century To The Present, Biographies

Related Category: English Literature, 20th Century To The Present, Biographies

Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh[Ev´lin, wO] Pronunciation Key, 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, but tempered by a mood of melancholic elegy. 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 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.