Where to Start with Evelyn Waugh: A Reading Guide
Where to start with Evelyn Waugh — whether to begin with Brideshead Revisited, Decline and Fall, or A Handful of Dust. A complete reading guide to Waugh's novels.
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) is the most technically accomplished British comic novelist of the twentieth century — a convert to Catholicism whose early satirical novels are among the funniest in English and whose later work (particularly Brideshead Revisited) combines that comedy with genuine theological seriousness. His targets (the English upper class, the media, the military, American culture, the modern world in general) are relentless and his prose is perfectly controlled: no word is wasted, no effect is accidental, and the comedy is both very funny and, in his darker novels, genuinely devastating.
Where to Start: Brideshead Revisited (1945)
The most widely beloved Waugh — and the novel that established his reputation beyond the satirical comedies of his earlier career. Charles Ryder, a middle-class English painter serving as an army officer in World War Two, returns to Brideshead Castle, where he was first taken as an Oxford undergraduate by Sebastian Flyte. The novel traces Charles’s involvement with the Flyte family across twenty years: Sebastian’s alcoholic decline, his love for Julia, and his gradual recognition that the Catholicism that seems to destroy the Flytes’ capacity for happiness is also what makes them who they are.
The novel is Waugh’s most lyrical — the prose has a warmth and beauty he allowed himself nowhere else — and his most autobiographical in its Catholic theme. The 1981 television adaptation (with Jeremy Irons and Anthony Andrews) is one of the finest adaptations of any English novel.
Decline and Fall (1928)
Waugh’s debut — and his purest comedy. Paul Pennyfeather, a mild and blameless Oxford undergraduate, is sent down (unjustly expelled) after being victimised by a drunken riot of the Bollinger Club and finds himself cycling through British institutions — a Welsh prep school of spectacular dysfunction, a fashionable architect’s social world, prison — each more corrupt and more absurd than the last, while remaining entirely passive throughout. The novel is very funny from beginning to end; its satirical method (everyone except Paul is villainous, incompetent, or both, and the institutions that claim to have values consistently demonstrate that they don’t) is Waugh at his most uninhibited.
A Handful of Dust (1934)
Waugh’s darkest comedy — and for many readers his finest novel. Tony Last is devoted to his Victorian Gothic house, Hetton Abbey, and to the values it represents; his wife Brenda has a fashionable London affair while Tony remains at home in ignorance. When their son is killed in a hunting accident, the novel’s comedy becomes something more disturbing, and Tony’s eventual fate — reading Dickens aloud forever to a mad recluse in the South American jungle, unable to escape — is one of the most nightmarish endings in British fiction. The comedy is real; so is the horror.
The Loved One (1948)
Waugh’s satirical attack on Southern California — particularly the funeral industry — following Dennis Barlow, an English poet working at a pet cemetery in Hollywood, who falls in love with Aimée Thanatogenos, a cosmetician at the vast human funeral park Whispering Glades (based on Forest Lawn). The novel is Waugh’s most purely satirical treatment of American culture: the mortuary’s euphemisms, its sentimental artificiality, its reduction of death to comfortable aesthetics are the vehicles for his contempt for American optimism and sentimentality. Extremely funny; extremely savage.
Reading Evelyn Waugh
Waugh’s comedy is cold and precise: he identifies human foolishness and institutional corruption with complete accuracy and renders it without sentiment or apology. His best novels are very funny and, beneath the comedy, deeply serious about what values have been lost and what their loss costs. Begin with Decline and Fall for the purest comedy; with Brideshead Revisited for the most emotionally rich; with A Handful of Dust for the darkest. All four novels listed here are among the finest British fiction of the twentieth century, and all reward repeated reading.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where should I start with Evelyn Waugh?
Brideshead Revisited (1945) is both the most widely read and the best starting point — Waugh's most celebrated novel, in which Charles Ryder, a middle-class English painter, recalls his entanglement with the aristocratic Flyte family and the great house Brideshead, and the way Catholicism eventually claims them all. It is Waugh's most serious novel and his most lyrical. Decline and Fall is the best alternative for readers who want Waugh's satirical comedy at its purest and most accessible; A Handful of Dust for his darkest comedy.
What is Brideshead Revisited about?
Brideshead Revisited (1945) is narrated by Charles Ryder, an army officer who returns during World War Two to Brideshead Castle, where he was entranced as an Oxford undergraduate by Sebastian Flyte, and later by Sebastian's sister Julia. The novel traces Charles's involvement with the Flyte family — his friendship with Sebastian, a charming alcoholic; his love affair with Julia; and his gradual recognition that Catholicism, the faith that seems to destroy the Flytes' happiness, is also what gives their lives their particular beauty and significance. Waugh intended the novel as an argument for Catholic faith; it has been read by many non-Catholics as a novel about loss.
What is Decline and Fall about?
Decline and Fall (1928) is Waugh's debut novel — a satire following Paul Pennyfeather, a mild Oxford undergraduate who is sent down (expelled) after being victimized by a drunken riot of the Bollinger Club, and finds himself working as a schoolmaster at a Welsh prep school of spectacular dysfunction. The novel is Waugh's purest comedy: each institution Paul encounters is more corrupt and more absurd than the last, and Paul himself — decent, passive, repeatedly victimized — moves through a world of gleeful savagery without ever quite understanding what is happening to him. Very funny from beginning to end.
What is A Handful of Dust about?
A Handful of Dust (1934) is Waugh's darkest comedy — the novel in which his satirical gifts are most fully applied to the destruction of something he genuinely cared about. Tony Last, a decent English landowner devoted to his Victorian Gothic house, Hetton Abbey, is betrayed by his wife Brenda, who has had an affair with a fashionable London socialite. The novel traces Tony's response to the betrayal and his eventual fate — stranded in the South American jungle, forced to read Dickens aloud forever to a mad recluse — with the cold comedy that is Waugh's most distinctive quality. The ending is among the most nightmarish in British fiction.
