Book description
In this unique collection of short stories composed between 1910-62,
Evelyn Waugh's early juvenilia are brought together with later pieces,
some of which became the inspirations for his novels. 'Mr Loveday's
Little Outing' is a blackly comic tale of a mental asylum and its
favourite resident; 'Cruise' sees a hilarious series of letters from a
na ve young woman as she travels with her family; 'A House of
Gentlefolks' observes a group of elderly eccentric aristocrats and their
young heir; and in 'The Sympathetic Passenger' a radio-loathing retiree
picks up exactly the wrong hitchhiker. These witty and immaculately
crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and
comic twists. 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).
