Evelyn Waugh- The Novelist

About the Book

English writer Evelyn Waugh was an expert satirist and an accomplished novelist; Evelyn Waugh was the second son of the late Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother Alec Waugh, the famous novelist. He was educated at Lancing and Hertford College, Oxford, where he read Modern History. In 1927 published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and in 1928 his first novel, Decline, and Fall, which was an immediate success. He spent the next nine years without abode, traveling in most parts of Europe, the near east, Africa, and tropical America. In 1939 he was commissioned in the Royal Marines and later transferred to Horse Guards. His best-known books before Brideshead Revisited were A Handful of Dust, a novel, and Edmund Campion. In 1942 he published Put Out More Flags, and then in 1945, Brideshead Revisited, When the Going was Good, The Loved One, Preceded Men at War, which came out in 1952 as the first volume in the Sword of Honor Trilogy and won the James Trial Black Prize. The Other Volumes, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender were published in 1955 and 1961. In 1964 he published A little Learning, the first volume of an autobiography. Evelyn Waugh was received into the Roman Catholic Church in 1930, and his earlier biography of Elizabethan Jesuit Martyr Edmund Campion was awarded the Hawthorne Prize in 1936.

About the Author

Prof Jagdish Chandra Jha has done yeoman’s service to the scholar community of English literature by bringing into print his thesis on Evelyn Waugh, the great novelist, one of the most famous English literature authors. I am Prof. Jha’s younger brother, couldn’t restrain myself from sketching his life as briefly as possible.

Prof J. C. Jha was born in 1932 in a small village, Amrita, in a remote district of Saharsa in Bihar (India). The village had no school, not even a primary one. It was mainly inhabited by agricultural laborers, obviously non-literate and poor.

Our father was, of course, a lettered man of modern times. He took Jagdish to a village nearby that had a primary school. His brilliance showed up in various fields, both academics, and sports. Eventually, he was selected to study in a renowned school in Bihar. There he passed the matriculation examination with flying colours.

With an admirable career in the school, he entered Patna Science College as an undergraduate student. This college was considered, at that time, one of the best in the country for Science teaching. Later he shifted to Patna College, which was famous for Arts teaching. There he pursued English literature.

Prof Jha, after completing MA, got appointed in Magadh University of Gaya, the place renowned all over the world for Buddha’s enlightenment. There he taught modern English literature. He became well known as an erudite English scholar and eventually occupied the post of the Head of the English Department.

While teaching in the University, Prof Jha completed his research work on Evelyn Waugh, under the guidance of Prof R. K. Sinha, the Head of the English Department of Patna University. Prof Sinha was a scholar of English literature, known far and wide. Having retired from service, Prof Jha still devotes most of his time to study despite being a grand older man of ninety!

- Nitiranjan Jha