Evelyn Waugh

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was born in London and studied at Oxford. His first novel, "Decline and Fall," was published in 1928 and immediately achieved great success, establishing him in the literary genre where he would excel: social satire and sharp comedy, focusing on the Bright Young Things of the interwar period and their desperate attempts to escape their privileged yet suffocating environment. This was followed by novels such as "Vile Bodies," "Black Mischief," "A Handful of Dust," "Scoop," "Brideshead Revisited," among others. Also noteworthy is his war memoir trilogy titled "The Sword of Honour," as well as his revealing diaries. As literary critic Edmund Wilson wrote, "Evelyn Waugh's novels are the only thing written in England worthy of comparison with the work of Fitzgerald and Hemingway... I believe they will endure over time and that Waugh [...] will be remembered as the only first-rate comic genius to emerge in England since Bernard Shaw."