Evelyn Waugh

He left Oxford University (Hertford College) in 1924 with a third-class degree. He taught at a private school in Wales and in 1925 attempted suicide by swimming out to sea, but was unsuccessful, turning back after being stung by a jellyfish.

His subsequent career as a journalist was truncated as a direct result of his literary success with his first novel, Decline and Fall. Although his racy novels of the "bright young things" in 1920s England made his reputation, he was a profoundly conservative writer who also had great success with more somber works like Brideshead Revisited.

In 2001, three of his books were named as part of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century by the editorial board of the American Modern Library.

Novels

• Decline and Fall[?] (1928)
• Vile Bodies[?] (1930)
• Black Mischief[?] (1932)
• A Handful of Dust[?] (1934)
• Scoop[?] - the rush of war reporters to a thinly disguised Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) (1938)
• Put Out More Flags[?] (1942)
• The Loved One[?] (subtitled An Anglo-American Tragedy)- about the excesses of a Californian funeral business
• Brideshead Revisited (subtitled The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder) - details the decline of the British upper class (1945)
• The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold[?] (1957)

He was the father of Auberon Waugh[?] and brother of Alec Waugh.

External Links

• Biography of Evelyn Waugh (http://www.cwrl.utexas.edu/~vfores/waugh)
• "The Best and Worst of Evelyn Waugh" (http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/54oct/rolo.htm)
• Evelyn Waugh Newsletter and Studies (http://www.lhup.edu/~jwilson3/newsletter.htm)