Evelyn Waugh Books in Order

Evelyn Waugh's eyewitness account of Haile Selassie's 1930 coronation in Addis Ababa, blending travel writing with sharp satire. He captures the elaborate ceremony, the visiting dignitaries and the uneasy clash between imperial pageantry and modern politics in Ethiopia.

An omnibus of Waugh's travel writing, gathering journeys through the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, Latin America, Africa and the Holy Land. Shipboard mishaps, remote outposts and political crises become vivid, often very funny portraits of places and people between the wars.

This volume pairs Waugh's biographies of the Jesuit martyr Edmund Campion and twentieth-century priest and writer Ronald Knox. Together they give brisk, sympathetic portraits of two English Catholics he admired, mixing narrative drive with reflections on faith, loyalty and persecution.

A collaborative volume in which Waugh and several contemporaries each explore one of the traditional seven deadly sins in essay form. His contribution sits alongside theirs, using irony and anecdote to probe temptation, self-deception and modern moral fashions.

Two of Waugh's finest early short stories presented together. In On Guard a faithful little dog becomes the focus of an overlong engagement, while Bella Fleace Gave a Party follows an eccentric Irish gentlewoman whose belated social ambitions lead to a cruelly neat ending.

A comprehensive edition of Waugh's stories, arranging more than two dozen pieces from across his career. Readers can follow his development from bright early satires to postwar tales that are stranger, sadder and more preoccupied with faith, failure and compromise.

A single-volume collection of Waugh's short fiction, from early experimental pieces to late stories such as Tactical Exercise and Charles Ryder's Schooldays. It gathers his black comedies, travel sketches and character studies in one place for easy reading.

This edition gathers more than twenty years of letters between novelists Nancy Mitford and Evelyn Waugh. Full of gossip, literary advice, quarrels and reconciliations, it offers a witty, sometimes poignant portrait of their friendship and of postwar Anglo-French society.

A compact collection of Waugh quotations arranged by theme, from religion and politics to travel, manners and writing. It distils his sharpest barbs and most memorable asides, offering a quick sense of his caustic humour and very definite views.

An edition of the long friendship in letters between Evelyn Waugh and Lady Diana Cooper. Their exchanges move from playful stories to frank confessions about war work, family life, faith and celebrity, revealing a complicated bond behind their polished public images.

A lively collection of letters between Evelyn Waugh and actress and hostess Lady Diana Cooper, who wrote to each other under the pet names Mr Wu and Mrs Stitch. The correspondence spans three decades of travel, war and social change, by turns affectionate, spiky and unexpectedly tender.

A substantial collection of Waugh's journalism, gathering essays, book reviews, travel pieces and occasional polemics written across nearly fifty years. It shows him at work as a professional critic, from early Oxford sketches to later reflections on art, politics and religion.

Short-story collection that includes Charles Ryder's Schooldays, an episode from the youth of the narrator of *Brideshead Revisited*. The other pieces range from light society sketches to stranger, more unsettling tales, showing Waugh experimenting with tone and structure.

Major selection of Waugh's own letters, from schooldays to the last year of his life. Writing to family, friends, editors and fellow authors, he comments on books in progress, travels, scandals and church affairs, often with more candour than in his published work.

An omnibus volume bringing together several of Waugh's major writings in a single book. It offers readers an easy way to sample his fiction and non-fiction side by side, from early satire to later, more reflective work.

A compact volume of Waugh's essays, articles and reviews, chosen to highlight his sharpest occasional writing. Subjects range from books and painting to Catholic life and postwar manners, all delivered in the precise, unsentimental style that marks his best journalism.

Edited from his private journals, these diaries follow Waugh from adolescence into his sixties. They record travel, military service, parties, breakdowns and religious worries in a more raw, unguarded voice than his fiction, and illuminate the background to many of his books.

Waugh's first book, an intimate biography of painter-poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. It traces Rossetti's rise within the Pre-Raphaelite circle, his troubled love life and his late decline, while also reflecting Waugh's early fascination with art, beauty and bohemian excess.

The first volume of Waugh's autobiography, covering his family background, childhood in London, schooldays at Lancing and undergraduate years at Oxford. With dry humour he recalls friendships, pranks and early failures that later fed directly into novels like *Decline and Fall* and *Brideshead Revisited*.

A late novella that brings back Basil Seal, the irresponsible adventurer from *Black Mischief* and *Put Out More Flags*, now facing old age in a changing England. Waugh uses Basil's schemes and family squabbles to mock new fashions and lingering aristocratic pretensions.

The final Sword of Honour novel follows Guy Crouchback through staff jobs in wartime Britain and a last, uneasy posting to Yugoslavia. As alliances shift and the conflict drags on, he confronts disillusionment, personal loss and what Christian duty might mean in a compromised world.

A late travel book cast as a diary of Waugh's 1959 tour through East and Central Africa. He visits Rhodesia, Kenya and other territories on the edge of independence, mixing sharp sketches of missions and landscapes with grumpy, revealing reactions to decolonisation.

Full-length biography of Ronald Knox, classicist, priest and noted Catholic writer. Drawing on close friendship and extensive research, Waugh recounts Knox's Anglican background, conversion, broadcasting fame and spiritual influence, presenting him as a witty yet deeply serious churchman.

Semi-autobiographical novel in which ageing Catholic writer Gilbert Pinfold, dosed with sleeping draughts and alcohol, suffers a terrifying bout of hallucinations on a sea voyage. The book coolly recounts his ordeal and recovery, doubling as a portrait of Waugh's own mid-life crisis.

In the second Sword of Honour novel, Guy Crouchback joins a fledgling commando brigade under his rival Tommy Blackhouse. Training on a remote Scottish island is boisterous, but the mood darkens in the disastrous Crete campaign, where confusion, courage and betrayal collide.

A small volume pairing two late stories. Waugh turns peacetime irritations, marriages and chance encounters into blackly comic dramas, showing how everyday resentments and fantasies of escape can harden into elaborate, sometimes dangerous games of the imagination.

Short dystopian satire set in a drab, over-managed future Britain where crime is indulged and the welfare state organises almost every aspect of life. Miles Plastic, an arsonist turned model prisoner, discovers that state-approved happiness can be as destructive as open cruelty.

A brief, reflective travelogue of Waugh's visit to the Holy Land in the mid-1930s. He describes shrines in and around Jerusalem, the tangle of competing claims over them and the uneasy blend of devotion, tourism and politics at sites sacred to three faiths.

Opening volume of the Sword of Honour trilogy. Middle-aged Catholic aristocrat Guy Crouchback returns from self-imposed exile to join the Royal Corps of Halberdiers, only to find early war service dominated by training flaps, eccentric officers and anticlimactic expeditions rather than glory.

Waugh's only historical novel, imagining the life of St Helena, mother of Constantine, and her search for the True Cross. Against the intrigues of late Roman society he follows an awkward, stubborn, practical woman trying to live out her new Christian faith.

Short novel set in Los Angeles, where an English poet drifts into work at a lavish pet cemetery and falls for an embalmer at a neighbouring human funeral home. Waugh uses Hollywood's death industry to mount a very dark comedy about taste, sincerity and exploitation.

Anthology gathering the best passages from Waugh's 1930s travel books *Labels*, *Remote People*, *Ninety-Two Days* and *Waugh in Abyssinia*. It offers a tightly edited tour of Mediterranean cruises, Ethiopian coronations, jungle treks and colonial outposts from the years before mass tourism.

Epic novel in which painter-soldier Charles Ryder looks back on his entwined life with the aristocratic Flyte family and their estate, Brideshead. Moving from Oxford in the 1920s to wartime Britain, it explores friendship, desire, class and Catholic ideas of grace and redemption.

Satirical wartime novel set during the phoney war and early blitz, reuniting characters from Waugh's earlier comedies. Basil Seal, Ambrose Silk and others scramble for roles and advantage as the upper classes improvise their way into a conflict they barely understand.

Highly polemical account of Waugh's late-1930s journey to Mexico, written in response to the nationalisation of British-owned oil. Part travelogue, part political tract, it attacks the Cárdenas government and dwells on the persecution of the Catholic Church.

Gathered stories and novella-length pieces written before and during the Second World War. Highlights include the unfinished novel fragment Work Suspended, the comic-melancholy return of Basil Seal, and several sharply drawn tales of prewar London and its shifting moral climate.

Comic masterpiece about shy nature columnist William Boot, who is mistakenly sent to cover a civil war in the fictional African state of Ishmaelia. Waugh lampoons foreign correspondents, newspaper proprietors and the absurdities of news-making under deadline pressure.

Travel book drawn from Waugh's time as a war correspondent during Italy's 1935 invasion of Ethiopia. He describes Addis Ababa intrigue, fellow journalists and the mechanics of propaganda, with a tone that alternates between fascinated observation and partisan irritation.

Collection of Waugh's early short stories, including the macabre title piece about a seemingly harmless asylum inmate granted an ill-judged 'little outing'. The volume ranges from bright society comedies to darker tales that later fed into novels like *A Handful of Dust*.

Biography of Edmund Campion, the sixteenth-century Jesuit priest executed for treason under Elizabeth I. Waugh portrays him as both brilliant scholar and martyr, vividly narrating his Oxford success, secret missionary work in England and trial and death at Tyburn.

Travel narrative recounting a gruelling ninety-two-day journey through British Guiana and into Brazil in the early 1930s. Waugh records river steamers, bush treks, mission stations and odd companions, undercutting romantic notions of exploration with discomfort, boredom and deadpan humour.

Novel about Tony Last, a contented but blinkered country gentleman whose marriage collapses and whose attempts to escape lead him into far darker territory. Waugh blends sharp social comedy with a bleak, unforgettable final act that questions what civilisation is worth.

Ferocious early satire set in the fictional African kingdom of Azania, where well-meaning Emperor Seth and his English-educated adviser Basil Seal try to impose modern civilisation. Their reforms spiral into chaos, skewering racism, imperial attitudes and fashionable progressivism.

Novel about the 'Bright Young People' of inter-war London, following gossip columnist Adam Fenwick-Symes and his friends through parties, scandals and sudden reversals. Farce gradually gives way to something darker as frivolity dissolves into exhaustion and the shadow of war.

Account of Waugh's 1930–31 journey to Abyssinia for Haile Selassie's coronation and his subsequent travels through Aden, Zanzibar, Kenya, Uganda, the Belgian Congo and South Africa. He contrasts feudal ceremony and colonial order, recording hospitality and discomfort with sardonic precision.

Waugh's first travel book, describing a 1929 cruise around the Mediterranean and into the Middle East and North Africa. More interested in fellow passengers than monuments, he turns port calls to places like Naples, Malta and Port Said into scenes of sharp social comedy.

Waugh's first novel, a chaotic farce about mild theology student Paul Pennyfeather, expelled from Oxford after a prank and dispatched to teach at an appalling Welsh public school. Misadventures with eccentric staff, disreputable aristocrats and disastrous schemes build to escalating absurdity.