A HANDFUL OF DUST

Taking its title from T.S. Eliot's modernist poem "The Waste Land", Evelyn Waugh's "A Handful of Dust" is a chronicle of Britain's decadence and social disintegration between the First and Second World Wars. This "Penguin Modern Classics" edition is edited with an introduction and notes by Robert Murray Davis.

After seven years of marriage, the beautiful Lady Brenda Last is bored with life at Hetton Abbey, the Gothic mansion that is the pride and joy of her husband, Tony. She drifts into an affair with the shallow socialite John Beaver and forsakes Tony for the Belgravia set. Brilliantly combining tragedy, comedy and savage irony, "A Handful of Dust" captures the irresponsible mood of the 'crazy and sterile generation' between the wars.

This breakdown of the Last marriage is a painful, comic re-working of Waugh's own divorce, and a symbol of the disintegration of society. Evelyn Waugh (1903-66) was born in Hampstead, second son of Arthur Waugh, publisher and literary critic, and brother of Alec Waugh, the popular novelist. In 1928 he published his first work, a life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and his first novel, "Decline and Fall", which was soon followed by "Vile Bodies" (1930), "A Handful of Dust" (1934) and "Scoop" (1938).

In 1942 he published "Put Out More Flags" and then in 1945 "Brideshead Revisited". "Men at Arms" (1952) was the first volume of "The Sword of Honour" trilogy, and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize; the other volumes, "Officers and Gentlemen" and "Unconditional Surrender", followed in 1955 and 1961. If you enjouyed "A Handful of Dust", you might like Waugh's "Vile Bodies", also available in "Penguin Modern Classics".