An Englishman’s Home Study Guide

Evelyn Waugh was born in 1903 to a somewhat literary family. His father was a publisher and biographer, and his brother Alec would also become an author in his own right. After attending public schools in his youth, Waugh won a scholarship to Oxford University, where he sought out and gained entrance to the social circles of the aristocratic elite. Losing his scholarship due to poor grades before he could obtain his degree, Waugh dropped out of Oxford and took a series of teaching jobs in Wales, Buckinghamshire, and Notting Hill while publishing short stories and drafting his earliest novels. In 1928, Waugh got married and published his first novel, Decline and Fall, an immediate commercial and critical success. Two years later, he converted to Catholicism, a spiritual transformation that impacted the rest of his life. After a stint as a foreign correspondent in Ethiopia and Eritrea, Waugh annulled his marriage, remarried, and moved with his new wife to Piers Court, a country estate in Gloucestershire. When World War II began soon after, Waugh entered the Royal Marines. Although he saw little of the front lines, he did write and publish Brideshead Revisited, his best-known work. After the war, Waugh became increasingly conservative and critical of the modern era. He began to lose both popularity and money, and although he produced many decently received novels after 1945, his expenditures outpaced his earnings, and he died in poor health in 1966.