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Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead in 1903, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was soon followed by Vile Bodies (1930), Black Mischief (1932), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Scoop (1938). Waugh travelled extensively and also wrote several travel books, as well as a biography of Edmund Campion and Ronald Knox. Other famous works include his Sword of Honour trilogy, and Brideshead Revisited (1945).
A small, judicious selection of Waugh's journalistic pieces, 1917-1964 - only a pendant to the recently-published diaries and letters, perhaps, but a display of the author's range without his excesses. Under Myself are the youthful, impudent pieces (mocking the plague of 'good taste,' satirizing the course of literary careers - but asking, already, Why Glorify Youth? ) and the late laments ( Why Hollywood Is a Term of Disparagement, I See Nothing But Boredom. . . Everywhere ). The Aesthete brings some of Waugh's keenest observation - of social and cultural modes - and his most evocative descriptions; surveying the monuments of our Augustan age of architecture, he conjures up A lovely house where an aged colonel plays wireless music to an obese retriever. The Man of Letters finds him analyzing Henry Green's Living, paying witty tribute to Osbert Sitwell, celebrating the unique career of Alfred Duggar, and writing about Max Beerbohm with elegance and tact. The pieces that represent Waugh the Conservative demonstrate his perturbations - a denunciation of a visit by Tito, the observation that In general a man is best fitted to the tasks he has seen his father perform - without bombast. And Gallagher's introduction to the Catholic writings puts Waugh's Faith in sympathetic perspective - as do the writings chosen: Come Inside, his own undogmatic account of how he became a Catholic; Edith Stein, a meticulous, restrained account of a convert. Throughout, there is evidence of Waugh's sense of structure and awareness of style, his enthusiasms as well as his prejudices. Whereas the diaries and letters may put off readers, this is more likely to encourage them to explore further. (Kirkus Reviews)
