Evelyn Waugh
Although he’s best known for Brideshead Revisited, his melancholy look back at the twilight of the English aristocracy, it's Evelyn Waugh’s genius for satire that truly distinguishes him. His acid wit and relentless drive to uncover hypocrisy and pretension make him a writer whose sweet way with words is equally matched by his powerful, almost bitter satires of modern culture.
Biography
Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was born in Hampstead, England, into a family of publishers and writers. He was educated at Lancing and at Hertford College, Oxford, where he majored in modern history. Waugh's first book, A Life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, was published in 1928. Soon afterward his first novel, Decline and Fall, appeared and his career was sensationally launched. In fifteen novels of cunning construction and lapidary eloquence, Time summarized later, Evelyn Waugh developed a wickedly hilarious yet fundamentally religious assault on a century that, in his opinion, had ripped up the nourishing taproot of tradition and let wither all the dear things of the world. Apart from his novels, Waugh also wrote several acclaimed travel books, two additional biographies, and an autobiography, A Little Learning.
Author biography courtesy of Time Warner.
