Brideshead Revisited
by Evelyn Waugh
Published by Little, Brown & Company, 1945
First Edition
Brideshead Revisited is Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece, a novel of memory, faith, and lost English aristocratic grandeur. The story follows Charles Ryder's love for the wealthy, Catholic Flyte family and their magnificent estate, Brideshead, from his Oxford days through World War II. The novel explores themes of religious faith, secular humanism, artistic ambition, and the passing of a world.
Waugh called it "my first novel rather than my last" because it marked a departure from his early satirical comedies toward more serious and overtly religious themes. The lush, nostalgic prose celebrates the beauty of pre-war England while examining the spiritual emptiness of a world without faith. The novel's famous prologue, written during wartime, sets a melancholic tone that colors the entire narrative.
The 1945 first American edition appeared as World War II ended, bringing Waugh's wartime meditation on English civilization to American readers. The novel became his most popular work and has never been out of print.
A unique find, and we only have one.
File this Under
