Evelyn Waugh

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Standard Name: Waugh, Evelyn
Birth Name: Evelyn Arthur St John Waugh
EW was a twentieth-century novelist whose startling black humour goes together with devastating satire and a low estimate of unredeemed human nature (whether he is fictionalizing the failings of other people or of himself). He is remembered not only for his novels but for his prolific journalism, travel writing, biography and autobiography, and for his posthumously published letters and diaries. His resolutely unmodernised Catholicism and his Toryism (more social and romantic than political) were not always beneficial to his work and until well after his death inflicted serious damage to his literary reputation, making him a bugbear to a generally liberal intellectual establishment.
Black and white, full-face, head and shoulders photograph of Evelyn Waugh, taken by Carl Van Vechten on 15 December 1940.

Connections

Connections Author name Excerpt
Intertextuality and Influence Antonia Fraser
Jemima (a graduate of Cambridge) here visits Oxford , with which her relationship is complicated by fact that she is to do a documentary on the minority of upper-crust, over-privileged students recently highlighted in the...
Leisure and Society Margaret Haig Viscountess Rhondda
After her schooling at St Leonard's and before her brief time at Oxford , Margaret Haig Thomas (later MHVR ) was a debutante for three years, during which time she was bored and suffocated by...
Literary responses Dorothy Whipple
DW 's mother and siblings cried over the text of her childhood autobiography, remembering old days.
Whipple, Dorothy. Random Commentary. Michael Joseph, 1966.
71
J. C. Squire praised the book in the Daily Telegraph and Evelyn Waugh in The Spectator wrote that...
Literary responses Nina Hamnett
Rebecca West was not charmed: her review likened NH to a character in Evelyn Waugh 's Vile Bodies and commented on the book's idiot gusto curiously combined with a strong suicidal impulse.
qtd. in
Booth-Clibborn, Edward, and Nina Hamnett. “Introduction”. Laughing Torso, Virago, 1984, p. v - x.
v
Alan Clutton-Brock
Literary responses G. B. Stern
A review by Evelyn Waugh suggested that GBS was better at thrillers than at those tiresome old family chronicles, the Rakonitzes and so forth. She herself pronounced this book not a bad thriller.
Stern, G. B. . And did he stop and speak to you?. Henry Regnery, 1958.
123
Literary responses Elizabeth Jane Howard
Arthur Koestler described this, before publication, as a cross between Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh . When EJH told him she was having trouble finishing it, he said she had finished it, and written beyond...
Literary responses Muriel Spark
Evelyn Waugh —whose novel The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, also about hallucinations, appeared a few months after Spark's—called the book very clever,
qtd. in
Spark, Muriel. Curriculum Vitae: Autobiography. Constable, 1992.
207
sang its praises, and guessed it would be attributed to...
Literary responses Muriel Spark
This novel was chosen a Book Society recommendation (of which between six and ten were selected per month); it was not the choice of the month, since the panel felt it was too morbid—deeply...
Literary responses Muriel Spark
Penelope Gilliatt thought the evil in Seton had been to some extent absorbed by Bridges.
Stannard, Martin. Muriel Spark. The Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009.
237
Evelyn Waugh pronounced this the cleverest and most elegant of all Mrs Spark's clever and elegant books.
Spark, Muriel. Robinson. Penguin, 1964.
last page
Literary responses Sybille Bedford
Nancy Mitford called A Legacyone of the very best novels I've ever read.
Bedford, Sybille. Jigsaw. Penguin, 1999.
prelims
Evelyn Waugh called it entirely delicious . . . cool . . . elegant.
qtd. in
Dirda, Michael. “Sips from the finest vintage”. Guardian Weekly, 1–7 July 2005, p. 25.
25
Reviewing a reprint for the...
Literary responses Edith Sitwell
This book was very much admired by Evelyn Waugh , who felt that ES had seen deep into Swift's tortured soul.
Glendinning, Victoria. Edith Sitwell. Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1981.
211
Literary responses Elizabeth Siddal
The poems attracted little attention initially, except for their connection to ES 's life. Swinburne was unusual in his estimation of her as a veritable artist in her own right. He discerned in A Year...
Literary responses Elizabeth De la Pasture
Novelist Evelyn Waugh was an ardent admirer of this book after coming on a copy by chance in 1950. His children liked it as much as he did, and thirty years later one of them,...
Literary responses Nancy Mitford
The Blessing did not do so well as its two predecessors; Antonia Fraser feels that it marked a decline in fictional achievement.
Fraser, Antonia. “A Most Superior Street”. Spectator.co.uk. Champagne for the brain.
NM wrote that My Blessing has had the most awful reviews you ever...
Literary responses Stella Gibbons
Cold Comfort Farm quickly became a critical and popular success, dispelling the fears of Longmans (SG 's publisher) that it was too eccentric to sell. When Longmans was left in ruins by bombing at...

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