Brief biography of novelist Evelyn Waugh, a leading satirist of his time, and famous for his popular Catholic book Brideshead Revisited.
Many people think that the English writer Evelyn Waugh was the most brilliant satirist. He was a leading satirical novelist of his day, his novels include Decline and Fall, Vile Bodies, Brideshead Revisited, The Loved One, and a trilogy about World War II.
Early Life of Waugh
Evelyn (Arthur St John) Waugh was born in Hamstead on October 28, 1903, into a comfortable middle-class family. His father, Arthur Waugh, was a publisher.
He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, and began his career teaching in various private schools. He found the work frustrating and almost hated it. However, the experience gave him the material for his first novel, Decline and Fall, published when he was 25 years old. A blessing, it was an immediate success. Several more riotously funny books followed.
The Journalist
In 1936, aged 33, Waugh went to Ethiopia as a newspaper reporter to cover the Italian invasion. The following year, he married Laura Herbert, settling in the West Country. From this experience in Ethiopia he wrote Scoop, a story about a regular columnist of nature and serene country life who is confused with a hard-bitten novelist and sent to cover a similar war. Scoop is partly based on Waugh's own experience as a journalist for Daily Mail.
The World War II Connection
Soon Waugh himself was involved in World War II. He served on a British military mission to aid the resistance movement in Yugoslavia. From his wartime experiences came a three-novel series – Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender – in which he reflects on army life and the struggle between good and evil.
When he was 27, Waugh became a Roman Catholic, and his religion played a part in several of his books, in particular, his popular Brideshead Revisited, which is about a Roman Catholic family living in a large country house. He returned to his earlier satirical style with the novel The Loved One, which makes fun of the work of morticians in California.
Evelyn Waugh's Final Years
Waugh passed his late years living quietly in the country. He died at the age of 62, on April 10, 1966. In addition to his novels he wrote biographies and travel books (A Tourist in Africa, written in 1960, was his last travel book), and an incomplete autobiography, A Little Learning (1964).
Works by Evelyn Waugh
- Decline and Fall, 1928
- Vile Bodies, 1930
- Black Mischief, 1932
- Scoop, 1938
- Put Out More Flags, 1942
- Brideshead Revisited, 1945
- The Loved One, 1948
- Men at Arms, 1955
- Officers and Gentlemen, 1955
- Unconditional Surrender, 1961
Sources:
Biographical Dictionary, edited by Una McGovern, Chambers (2002)
Dictionary of Writers, edited by Rosemary Goring, Larousse (1994)
Guide to Literature in English, by Ian Ousby, Cambridge University Press (1993)
