Women’s Writing in the British Isles from the Beginnings to the Present
Evelyn Waugh
-
Standard Name: Waugh, Evelyn
Birth Name: Evelyn Arthur St John Waugh
EW
was a twentieth-century novelist whose startling black humour goes together with devastating satire and a low estimate of unredeemed human nature (whether he is fictionalizing the failings of other people or of himself). He is remembered not only for his novels but for his prolific journalism, travel writing, biography and autobiography, and for his posthumously published letters and diaries. His resolutely unmodernised Catholicism
and his Toryism
(more social and romantic than political) were not always beneficial to his work and until well after his death inflicted serious damage to his literary reputation, making him a bugbear to a generally liberal intellectual establishment.
This is how Evelyn Waugh
addressed her when they appeared together in Noblesse Oblige, edited by NM
.
Styled: The Honourable
When her father...
Occupation
Elizabeth Jane Howard
EJH
also free-lanced in journalism and on television. She appeared on discussion programmes about books (which were more plentiful in those days) and was also asked to appear on the political programme Table Talk...
Performance of text
Bryony Lavery
A rather different stage adaptation by BL
, of Evelyn Waugh
's Brideshead Revisited, opened as the inaugural production at the newly redeveloped Theatre Royal in York, before going on tour.
Hickling, Alfred. “Brideshead Revisited review—Waugh’s charming men hit the stage in style”. theguardian.com, 5 May 2016.
Author summary
Elizabeth Jolley
EJ
, writing in the later twentieth century, was called the most comical and disturbing writer working in Australia today.
Bird, Delys, and Brenda Walker, editors. Elizabeth Jolley: New Critical Essays. Angus and Robertson, 1991.
back-cover
The author of some fifteen novels as well as plays, poetry, and short stories...
Publishing
Nancy Mitford
The essay was provoked by a scholarly article, Upper Class English Usage, published in an academic journal in 1954 by Professor Alan Ross
. The terms U, for upper-class, and Non-U, for...
Stannard, Martin. Muriel Spark. The Biography. Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2009.
164
She finished writing in late 1955, but then hit a snag: Macmillan
developed cold feet about its being difficult. During this hiatus the proofs...
Publishing
Nancy Mitford
NM
dedicated her novel The Blessing to Evelyn Waugh
.
Mitford, Nancy. “Critical Materials”. Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, edited by Charlotte Mosley, Hodder and Stoughton, 1993, p. various pages.
xxi, 243, 282-3n3
Reception
Barbara Pym
Another element that makes her hard to place is her comedy. Though her work has been likened to that of Drabble
and Lively
(both her champions) her place is rather with out-and-out satirists like Angela Thirkell
Reception
Elizabeth Jenkins
The book received some appreciative reviews, but there were others which argued that EJ
was culpable in her use of real events which were so traceable. The Time and Tide notice (by a reviewer whom...
Textual Features
Olivia Manning
The first trilogy draws on OM
's experience of the early years of the Second World War in eastern Europe. In both trilogies, British national concerns are disconcertingly filtered through people whose priorities and loyalties...
Textual Production
Nancy Mitford
Describing NM
's letters as an essential part of her artistic output,
Mitford, Nancy. “Critical Materials”. Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, edited by Charlotte Mosley, Hodder and Stoughton, 1993, p. various pages.
vii
her niece Charlotte Mosley
has edited two collections: Love from Nancy: The Letters of Nancy Mitford, 1993, and The Letters of...
Textual Production
Winifred Holtby
WH
's inspiration for the novel came from reports of the coronation of the Emperor of Abyssinia
in 1930.
Shaw, Marion, and Winifred Holtby. “Introduction”. Mandoa, Mandoa!, Virago, 1982, p. ix - xix.
xi-xii
Evelyn Waugh
, who was present at the coronation, based his novel Black Mischief on...
Textual Production
Lady Cynthia Asquith
LCA
's column for the Times and her articles elsewhere led naturally to further miscellaneous work for and about children. (Evelyn Waugh
was mistaken in his unshakable belief that she was the true author...
Textual Production
Rose Macaulay
Over the years, RM
published several dozen literary articles in a wide range of magazines, newspapers, and commemorative volumes. She wrote on past and contemporary literary figures, including Leslie Stephen
, Stella Benson
, Rebecca West
Travel
Theodora Benson
Not long after this she and her friend Betty Askwith
set out together for Greece (which Askwith wanted to visit) and Yugoslavia and Albania (which Benson wanted to visit). The tourist trade was not even...
