Where to Start with Evelyn Waugh: A Reading Guide

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.

Why Brideshead Revisited Is an Ideal First Book

For a reader new to Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited is an ideal first book because it is his most famous and beloved novel and a fine expression of his distinctive gifts, the elegant prose, the rich evocation of a vanished world, and the blend of satire, nostalgia, and spiritual seriousness. Brideshead Revisited follows the narrator’s entanglement with an aristocratic Catholic family between the wars, in a lush, nostalgic, and ultimately serious novel of memory, faith, and the passing of a world. As an entry point it is ideal, for it is among his best-known works and a perfect example of his elegant, evocative, and morally serious fiction. It welcomes the newcomer with its compelling story, its elegant prose, and its emotional and spiritual depth, drawing the reader into his distinctive vision. It is among his major works and a fine representation of his gifts, so the new reader encounters Waugh at his most characteristic. For the newcomer, then, Brideshead Revisited is an excellent starting point.

What to Expect as a New Reader

As a new reader, you can expect Brideshead Revisited to be an elegant, nostalgic, and spiritually serious novel. You can expect elegant prose, for Waugh writes with great style, polish, and beauty. You can expect a rich evocation of a vanished world, for the novel lovingly renders the world of the English aristocracy and Oxford between the wars. You can expect nostalgia, for the novel is suffused with longing for a lost world and lost youth. You can expect spiritual seriousness, for the novel is, beneath its surface, a serious exploration of Catholic faith and grace. You can expect memorable characters and an emotionally and morally rich story. You can expect a shift from early comic brightness to deeper seriousness. Expect, in short, an elegant, nostalgic, and spiritually serious novel, a fine introduction to Waugh’s gifts.

Going Deeper After Your First Book

Once Brideshead Revisited has introduced you to Waugh’s gifts, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore his other novels, which reveal another side of his genius, the brilliant, biting satirist. His early comic novels are savagely funny satires of the absurdities of high society, the press, and modern life, while his acclaimed war trilogy combines his satirical gifts with his deeper seriousness, following a disillusioned officer through the Second World War. Reading these after Brideshead Revisited deepens your appreciation of Waugh’s distinctive gifts, the elegant prose, the satirical wit, and the underlying seriousness. His characteristic gifts, comic and serious alike, run through his work. Building your reading journey through Waugh is a matter of following his fiction from Brideshead Revisited into his satirical comedies and his war trilogy. The reader who begins here and continues will encounter one of the finest English prose stylists and satirists of the twentieth century.

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.