Decline and Fall

Hardback

Main Details

Title Decline and Fall
Authors and Contributors      By (author) Evelyn Waugh
Physical Properties
Format:Hardback
Pages:320
Dimensions(mm): Height 197,Width 127
Category/GenreModern and contemporary fiction (post c 1945)
Classic fiction (pre c 1945)
ISBN/Barcode 9780241585290
ClassificationsDewey:823.912
Audience
General

Publishing Details

Publisher Penguin Books Ltd
Imprint Penguin Classics
Publication Date 27 October 2022
Publication Country United Kingdom

Description

Evelyn Waugh's hilarious debut novel, now in a wonderful new hardback edition Sent down from Oxford for indecent behaviour, Paul Pennyfeather is oddly unsurprised to find himself qualifying for the position of schoolmaster at Llanabba Castle. His colleagues are an assortment of misfits, rascals and fools, including Prendy (plagued by doubts) and Captain Grimes, who is always in the soup (or just plain drunk). Then Sports Day arrives, and with it the delectable Margot Beste-Chetwynde, floating on a scented breeze. As the farce unfolds and the young run riot, no one is safe, least of all Paul.

Author Biography

Evelyn Waugh was born in Hampstead, London, in 1903. He studied History at Hertford College, Oxford, but left without a degree. After a brief period as a teacher, he published his first book, a biography of the artist Dante Gabriel Rossetti, in 1928. The same year also saw the publication of his first novel, Decline and Fall, which established his reputation. Further novels, including Vile Bodies (1930), A Handful of Dust (1934) and Brideshead Revisited (1945) were highly acclaimed. Waugh also wrote several travel books and short stories, and was a prolific journalist and book reviewer. Waugh died on Easter Sunday, 1966, at his home in Combe Florey, Somerset.

Reviews

Decline and Fall is that all-too-rare phenomenon, a good nonsense novel. Its author has had the happy inspiration to take nothing seriously, and least of all himself. The result is a book which makes more sense than most.--T.S. Matthews, The New Republic A savagely comic masterpiece.--Times Literary Supplement A world of anarchic fantasy, floodlit with a bland, devastating brilliance....Waugh's people were of two classes, both of whom he knew intimately: the giddy rich and adventurers of vast caddishness....The characters reeled their lunatic way, with sublime insouciance or sublime rascality, through a harlequinade ending in gruesome but hilarious calamity.--Charles J. Rolo, Atlantic Monthly Irresistible....One of Waugh's best.--New York Times Book Review Surely one of the finest satirical novels of our time, in whcih uplift, religion, romance, and personal animus do not dissipate the satiric intention.--Ernest Jones, The Nation