Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead (Paperback)
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Description
Evelyn Waugh was already famous when Brideshead Revisited was published in 1945. The chronicle of a household, a family, and a journey of religious faith—an elegy for a vanishing world—Waugh's masterwork was a tribute and testimony to a family he had fallen in love with a decade earlier. The Lygons of Madresfield were every bit as glamorous, eccentric, and fascinating as their fictional Brideshead counterparts, their story just as compelling, filled with secrets and betrayals, scandals and unwavering love.
Mad World is Paula Byrne's innovative and engrossing biography of Evelyn Waugh, recalling the loves and obsessions that shaped his world and his writing, capturing Waugh through the friendships that mattered most to him, and exploring how he encoded the defining experiences of his adult life in his greatest literary work.
About the Author
Paula Byrne is the author of Perdita, a highly acclaimed biography of eighteenth-century celebrity Mary Robinson. A regular contributor to the Times Literary Supplement and other publications, she lives in Warwickshire, England, with her three children and her husband, the critic and biographer Jonathan Bate.
Praise for Mad World: Evelyn Waugh and the Secrets of Brideshead…
“An utterly captivating and generous book with all the intimacy of a diary and the scholarly soundness of a fine biography…A singular accomplishment.”
-Chicago Tribune
“An engaging book…remarkably thorough…Deftly interweaving biographical details and textual analysis, Byrne makes the connections between Waugh’s art, Roman Catholic faith, and life dance.”
-Heller McAlpin, Christian Science Monitor
“Altogether excellent and wickedly entertaining…Scandalous detail enlivens every page of this delicious biography…Over the years I’ve read all the major biographies of Evelyn Waugh, and Byrne’s is…the fastest moving and the most fun.”
-Michael Dirda, Washington Post
“Well-researched and absorbing.”
-Booklist
“Remarkable…not only a meticulously researched biography but also an enjoyable read.”
-Library Journal
“A considerable contribution to literary history…includes enough gossipy asides to intrigue readers.”
-Publishers Weekly
“A splendid new book…While displaying the research values of a scholar Byrne also manages to write with the panache and timing of a popular novelist.”
-Alexander Waugh, Daily Beast
“A sharp, entertaining literary biography…A perceptive study of how Evelyn Waugh emerged from middle-class beginnings to inhabit the tony corridors described in BRIDESHEAD REVISITED.”
-Kirkus Reviews
“’Mad World’ is the perfect title for this sparkling book, a hybrid of family romance, incisive literary criticism, and deliciously hot gossip.”
-Martin Rubin, Washington Times