OverDrive would like to use cookies to store information on your computer to improve your user experience at our Website. One of the cookies we use is critical for certain aspects of the site to operate and has already been set. You may delete and block all cookies from this site, but this could affect certain features or services of the site. To find out more about the cookies we use and how to delete them, click here to see our Privacy Policy.
Evelyn
Waugh's short fiction reveals in miniaturized perfection the elements that made
him the greatest satirist of the twentieth century. The stories collected here
range from delightfully barbed portraits of the British upper classes to an
alternative ending to Waugh's novel A
Handful of Dust; from a "missing chapter" in the life of Charles Ryder, the
nostalgic hero of Brideshead Revisited,
to a plot-packed morality tale that Waugh composed at a very tender age; from
an epistolary lark in the voice of "a young lady of leisure" to a darkly comic
tale of scandal in a remote (and imaginary) African outpost.
The Complete Stories is a dazzling
distillation of Waugh's genius, abundant evidence that one of the twentieth
century's most admired and enjoyed English novelists was also a master of the
short form.
Evelyn
Waugh's short fiction reveals in miniaturized perfection the elements that made
him the greatest satirist of the twentieth century. The stories collected here
range from delightfully barbed portraits of the British upper classes to an
alternative ending to Waugh's novel A
Handful of Dust; from a "missing chapter" in the life of Charles Ryder, the
nostalgic hero of Brideshead Revisited,
to a plot-packed morality tale that Waugh composed at a very tender age; from
an epistolary lark in the voice of "a young lady of leisure" to a darkly comic
tale of scandal in a remote (and imaginary) African outpost.
The Complete Stories is a dazzling
distillation of Waugh's genius, abundant evidence that one of the twentieth
century's most admired and enjoyed English novelists was also a master of the
short form.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
Due to publisher restrictions the library cannot purchase additional copies of this title, and we apologize if there is a long waiting list. Be sure to check for other copies, because there may be other editions available.
About the Author-
Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966), whom Time called "one of the century's great masters of English prose," wrote several widely acclaimed novels as well as volumes of biography, memoir, travel writing, and journalism. Three of his novels, A Handful of Dust, Scoop, and Brideshead Revisited, were selected by the Modern Library as among the 100 best novels of the twentieth century.
Reviews-
Starred review from September 13, 1999 "It seems to me that Nature, like a lazy author, will round off abruptly into a short story what she obviously intended to be the opening of a novel," observes the Oxford-dropout narrator of "A House of Gentlefolk," and the same might be said of a handful of the 40-odd short pieces in this lavishly entertaining collection that resemble sketches and false starts toward longer works. Among them are two intriguing chapters of Work Suspended, a novel that Waugh abandoned in the mid-1940s, and his Oxford writings and juvenilia. But at his best, Waugh is a blazing practitioner of the short story, for it proves an ideal framework for a style that eschews the psychoanalytical investigations of modernist writers like Joyce or Woolf for taut social commentary, stylized characters and hilarious, dramatic conceits. Few aspects of life in England between the wars escape Waugh's blistering attention, be they the colonial blunderings of innocents abroad, the manners of genteel country families or the antics of his own peers, such as the supercilious Bright Young Thing in "Out of Depth" who antagonizes a magician he meets at a London dinner party and is transported to the 25th century. Waugh loves visiting cruelties upon his characters, like the cuckolded London dilettante in "The Man Who Liked Dickens" who funds an ill-fated expedition to the Amazon, is imprisoned by a Kurtz-like chief and forced to read Dickens to his captor. His misanthropy notwithstanding, Waugh is so adept at punchy openings, deadpan zingers and wickedly ironic situations, and so graceful is his use of language, that this volume should serve, at a time of renewed interest in the short story, as primer on the infinite possibilities of the form.
Title Information+
Publisher
Hachette Book Group
OverDrive Listen
Release date:
OverDrive MP3 Audiobook
Release date:
Digital Rights Information+
OverDrive MP3 Audiobook
Burn to CD:
Permitted
Transfer to device:
Permitted
Transfer to Apple® device:
Permitted
Public performance:
Not permitted
File-sharing:
Not permitted
Peer-to-peer usage:
Not permitted
All copies of this title, including those transferred to portable devices and other media, must be deleted/destroyed at the end of the lending period.
There are no copies of this issue left to borrow. Please try to borrow this title again when a new issue is released.
| Sign In
You will be prompted to sign into your library account on the next page.
If this is your first time selecting “Send to NOOK,” you will then be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
The first time you select “Send to NOOK,” you will be taken to a Barnes & Noble page to sign into (or create) your NOOK account. You should only have to sign into your NOOK account once to link it to your library account. After this one-time step, periodicals will be automatically sent to your NOOK account when you select "Send to NOOK."
You can read periodicals on any NOOK tablet or in the free NOOK reading app for iOS, Android or Windows 8.
