Short Story Collections
In this unique collection of Waugh's early short stories, some of which became the inspirations for his novels, Waugh displays his unique talent for comedy and narration. 'Mr Loveday's Little Outing' is a blackly comic tale of a mental asylum and its favourite resident, while 'Cruise' sees a hilarious series of letters from a naïve young woman as she travels with her family. These witty and immaculately crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and comic twists.
These pieces show the range of Waugh's skills: "Mr Loveday's Little Outing"; "Cruise"; "Period Piece"; "On Guard"; "An Englishman's Home"; "Excursion in Reality"; "Bella Fleace Gave a Party"; "Winner Takes All"; "Work Suspended"; "Scott-King's Modern Europe"; "Basil Seal Rides Again"; and "Charles Ryder's Schooldays".
Gilbert Pinfold is a reclusive Catholic novelist suffering from acute inertia. In an attempt to keep insomnia at bay he has been imbibing an unappetizing cocktail of bromide, chloral and creme de menthe. He books a passage on the SS Caliban, and as it cruises towards Rangoon, he slips into madness.
A dozen stories tell of an incurable psychopath, luxury cruises, a kidnapping, a journey into the future, and two brothers at odds with each other
In this unique collection of short stories composed between 1910-62, Evelyn Waugh's early juvenilia are brought together with later pieces, some of which became the inspirations for his novels. 'Mr Loveday's Little Outing' is a blackly comic tale of a mental asylum and its favourite resident; 'Cruise' sees a hilarious series of letters from a naïve young woman as she travels with her family; 'A House of Gentlefolks' observes a group of elderly eccentric aristocrats and their young heir; and in 'The Sympathetic Passenger' a radio-loathing retiree picks up exactly the wrong hitchhiker. These witty and immaculately crafted stories display the finest writing of a master of satire and comic twists.
A "lavishly entertaining" ( Publishers Weekly ) 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.