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Brideshead Revisited Paperback – December 11, 2012
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The wellsprings of desire and the impediments to love come brilliantly into focus in Evelyn Waugh's masterpiece -- a novel that immerses us in the glittering and seductive world of English aristocracy in the waning days of the empire.
Through the story of Charles Ryder's entanglement with the Flytes, a great Catholic family, Evelyn Waugh charts the passing of the privileged world he knew in his own youth and vividly recalls the sensuous pleasures denied him by wartime austerities. At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh's early satiric explorations and reveals him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity.
"A genuine literary masterpiece." --Time
"Heartbreakingly beautiful...The twentieth century's finest English novel." --Los Angeles Times
- Print length432 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherBack Bay Books
- Publication dateDecember 11, 2012
- Dimensions5.63 x 1.13 x 8.25 inches
- ISBN-100316216453
- ISBN-13978-0316216456
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"Heartbreakingly beautiful....The 20th century's finest English novel."―Los Angeles Times
"A genuine literary masterpiece....Brideshead Revisited is actually a wildly entertaining, swooningly funny-sad story about an iumpressionable young man, Charles Ryder, who goes to Oxford in the 1930s and falls in love with a family: the wealthy, eccentric, aristocratic Flytes, owners of a grand old country house called Brideshead....Told in flashbacks from the dark days of World War II, the novel is aglimmer with the guttering candle glow of an elegant age that was already passing away."―Lev Grossman, TIME
"Evelyn Waugh's finest achievement."―John K. Hutchens, New York Times
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Back Bay Books; Reprint edition (December 11, 2012)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 432 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0316216453
- ISBN-13 : 978-0316216456
- Item Weight : 14.4 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.63 x 1.13 x 8.25 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #25,463 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #241 in World War II Historical Fiction (Books)
- #998 in Classic Literature & Fiction
- #2,426 in Literary Fiction (Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (/ˈɑːrθər ˈiːvlɪn ˈsɪndʒən wɔː/; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966), known by his pen name Evelyn Waugh, was an English writer of novels, biographies and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and reviewer of books. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisited (1945) and the Second World War trilogy Sword of Honour (1952–61).
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
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Reviewed in the United States on December 11, 2015
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History spared me that dilemna. Even had the war lasted until I was old enough to fight, I wouldn't have been drafted. On January 27, 1973, two weeks before my twelfth birthday, President Nixon hoping to lessen opposition to the war by stopping conscription, ended the draft. Although after President Jimmy Carter reinstituted it in July 1980, I registered at the age of nineteen, by the time the next conflict, the Gulf War, began in 1990, I was twenty-nine years old, three years past the age eligible to be drafted.
During the Vietnam War, I recall, reading in newspaper pages obituaries of the conflict's casualties, local boys not much older than me. we all grieved for them and their families.
In Brideshead Revisited, the great War that would come to be known as World War I claimed the lives of Charles's mother who served with the Red Cross and died on the Serbian front. The carnage claimed three of Sebastian's uncles "between Mons and Passchendaele."
Like me, Charles and Sebastian were too young to fight. Unlike me, they and specially Sebastian regret being denied a chance to prove themselves on the battlefield. How has that denial influenced Sebastians excessive drinking?
The plot is set in a changing world in Britain and America prior to and during World War II. The PBS series, Brideshead Revisited, aired in the 1980s, and is available on DVD or download today to supplement the reading of this novel. The television series helps bring to life the characters and make them solidify in your memory.
Captain Charles Ryder and his company of soldiers are to set up headquarters at a large estate. Charles recognizes the mansion as Brideshead. The memories of his connection to Brideshead in his youth are awakened.
He was a young artist when he met Lord Sebastian Flyte at Oxford in 1923. Sebastian was very rich and bored. He wanted fun, lightness, silliness; he wanted entertainment to fill the emptiness within. He carried Aloysius, his toy teddy bear everywhere. Charles was infatuated with him. Sebastian was irresponsible but his family bailed him out. His family took steps to oversee his activities and hired Mr. Samgrass to keep an eye on him. Sebastian’s family, especially Lady Marchmain Flyte, his mother, pulled Charles into intimacy in order to control Sebastian. She succeeded in making Charles open up to her, but her attempts to convert Charles to Catholicism failed. Sebastian wanted to get away from his family; he felt trapped. He was less and less in love with Charles as Charles become close to his mother.
Sebastian drank more and more. His family, especially his mother, tried to control this, but Sebastian only drank more heavily. Charles wanted to please Sebastian and win his approval, so he gave him money when he asked for it. Sebastian’s mother coldly asked Charles to leave Brideshead when she found he had given Sebastian money for drinking.
Charles had had enough and distanced himself from Brideshead, although he still pined for Sebastian. He married Celia, a pretty woman, who took pride in his success as a painter and worked hard to promote him. Charles was attracted to her initially but did not love her. After returning from a 2-year trip to Central America where he had gone to renew his artistic inspiration, Charles showed indifference to his wife and children. When he and Celia were on a ship on vacation, he saw Julia, Sebastian’s sister. He was attracted to her because she reminded him of Sebastian.
Julia and Charles both got divorced so they could get married. However, as her father lay dying and Charles did not see the purpose of a priest giving her unconscious father, Lord Marchmain, the “last rites”, she realized that she could not marry Charles and give up her religion.
The author says the book is about faith in God, the Brideshead family vs Charles, who is a nonbeliever. The book is about “the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters”. The book seems to be more than that to me. It is about the choices we make, the paths we take in love and faithfulness.
Top reviews from other countries

"I started reading Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited today. He writes so well that it seems a pity that he hasn't got something better to write about." Thus wrote Duff Cooper in his diary for August 1945. I agree.
Although the book contains some brilliant passages (Anthony Blanche is particularly delicious) at least half a dozen of Waugh's novels are more entertaining. For outrageous laugh-out-loud satire Scoop and Decline and Fall are very good. (If you are looking for an "Oxford novel" Decline and Fall ticks the box.) Vile Bodies contains numerous amusing vignettes, but is not as coherent as Scoop and Decline and Fall. (Black Mischief is in my opinion not very good because Waugh is at his best when satirising his own people.) A Handful of Dust is very dark, but sustains dramatic tension much better than Brideshead. Finally, the trilogy of Men at Arms, Officers and Gentlemen, and Unconditional Surrender is a brilliant portrayal of the Second World War from a British perspective. I would not bother with Brideshead unless you have time to read everything Waugh wrote.


It's a great book and, of course, it's been made into a Masterpiece Theater series years ago. There are many reviews of this work already, so just to illustrate the excellent writing, I will just say that I think the romantic episode on an ocean liner during a storm at sea (her husband is absent; his wife is laid up with seasickness) is the most romantic passage I can think of in literature.

Anyway, it's good stuff. It feels more contemporary than I expected, not at all dry, and is actually About Something. Great opening, great ending. Recommended.
8/10
David Brookes
Author of 'Cycles of Udaipur'

Apart from this, the book is extremely well written, from the very first pages where Charles Ryder, now in the war and billeted in Brideshead Castle, reflects back to earlier times he spent at Brideshead.
Evelyn Waugh described Brideshead as his Magnum Opus. I’ve now read it more than once, watched the TV series and listened to the BBC dramatisation of the story. I would agree.
I hope you find my review helpful.


Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on September 3, 2022
Apart from this, the book is extremely well written, from the very first pages where Charles Ryder, now in the war and billeted in Brideshead Castle, reflects back to earlier times he spent at Brideshead.
Evelyn Waugh described Brideshead as his Magnum Opus. I’ve now read it more than once, watched the TV series and listened to the BBC dramatisation of the story. I would agree.
I hope you find my review helpful.
