The Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh

“Although not really known as a short-story writer, this first-time gathering of his work in that form is incontrovertible evidence of his short-story writing ability. These thirty-nine stories span Waugh’s writing career, and to a one they demonstrate his trademark wit and sophistication.” —Booklist

“A concise, readable piece of Waugh scholarship that deserves a place in all library collections; highly recommended.” —Library Journal

“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…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.” —Publishers Weekly

“Mordant, mirthful, and unrelenting in their lampoon of aristocratic mischief, Evelyn Waugh’s novels have earned him a permanent place in the literary pantheon. But this cantankerous master…was no less adept when it came to the short form….And he continued to write short fiction throughout the rest of his career, all of which has now been collected in the delectable Complete Stories of Evelyn Waugh. The first few entries in the collection capture a kinder, gentler author, not yet red at the verbal tooth and claw. But by 1932, when he wrote ‘Love in the Slump,’ Waugh’s eye for the black-comic detail was firmly in place…Waugh’s wit only sharpened throughout the succeeding decades, and the very texture of his prose thickened…The Complete Stories offers an accurate and stupendously entertaining vision of human folly, no less effective for being administered in smaller doses.” —Amazon.com, editorial review

“A necessary purchase...You emerge braced and bolstered, as if by a cold shower and a cocktail...That Waugh enriched us with the unalloyed gleam of his of his prose—far purer than any of his leaden imitators manage—is now beyond debate.” —New Yorker

“Terrifically good, witty and wild.” —Boston Globe