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Evelyn Waugh

Decline and Fall Paperback – September 1, 1999

by Evelyn Waugh (Author)

749 ratings

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Subtitled "A Novel of Many Manners, " Evelyn Waugh's notorious first novel lays waste the "heathen idol" of British sportsmanship, the cultured perfection of Oxford, and the inviolable honor codes of the English gentleman.

Print length

304 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Back Bay Books
Publication date

September 1, 1999
Dimensions

5 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches
ISBN-10

0316926078
ISBN-13

978-0316926072
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966), whom Time called "one of the century's great masters of English prose," wrote several widely acclaimed novels as well as volumes of biography, memoir, travel writing, and journalism. Three of his novels, A Handful of Dust, Scoop, and Brideshead Revisited, were selected by the Modern Library as among the 100 best novels of the twentieth century.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Back Bay Books; Later Printing edition (September 1, 1999)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0316926078
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316926072
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 8.5 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5 x 0.75 x 7.75 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #2,243,599 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1,689 in British & Irish Humor & Satire
- #16,350 in Fiction Satire
- #49,648 in Classic Literature & Fiction

Customer Reviews:
749 ratings

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Evelyn Waugh

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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).

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Customer reviews

5 star		53%
4 star		27%
3 star		13%
2 star		4%
1 star		3%

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Top reviews from the United States

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J. P Spencer

Biting satire

Reviewed in the United States on January 4, 2022

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As much as I despise Waugh's conservatism and racism, I absolutely love reading his books. Decline and Fall's wickedly biting satire is one of the funniest things I've ever read. Waugh makes fun of absolutely everyone. The core here is the utter inanity of the upper crust and while written in 1928, I'm not sure our political and social leadership is in any way smarter today.

3 people found this helpful

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Holly Reinecke

Waugh's first book a winner

Reviewed in the United States on June 3, 2012

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I've loved Evelyn Waugh for most of my adult life. His skewering of British society as it was during the early decades of the 20th century, his word selection, his interesting and varied characterizations are among the finest products of British fiction. In the midst of his writing life he was writing as intelligently and satirically as he did at the beginning. Reading "Decline and Fall" and "The Loved One" (1947) shows that Waugh lost none of his power over 19 years.
This book, "Decline and Fall", recounts the blossoming of a rather nebbishy young divinity student, Paul Pennyfeather, after he is expelled from Oxford for an "indecency" that he did not commit. Paul slowly winds his way through British society until he is engaged to a very beautiful, very duplicious divorced woman. On his wedding day he is charged with aiding white slavery and delivered into a harsh life in prison. Eventually rescued by his criminal fiancee, he acts on his discovery that he is happier away from the luxury and shallowness of British Society. The plot may not sound of great interest but Waugh's writing and characters had me laughing and shaking my head in wonder at his humor.
I urge anyone that enjoys P.G. Wodehouse to try Evelyn Waugh.

14 people found this helpful

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Guillermo Maynez

The sad story of Paul Pennyfeather

Reviewed in the United States on January 15, 2007

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This bitter farce tells the story of one Paul Pennyfeather, a young man who is expelled from an Oxford-like university due to a misunderstanding. Ever since this first scene the reader understands that he's reading a novel of the absurd. The point is never to tell a credible story with a tight plot, but to develop a savage satire on the British society, especially the educational system. After being expelled, Paul finds himself with no money and so is forced to get a job at a school of the worst level. His colleagues are pathetic and their small misadventures are hilarious. Of course, Waugh's humor is very British: caustic, understated, and at the same time some passages, like the athletic event, are excessive to the point of ridicule. At some point, Paul makes the acquaintance of the mother of one of his pupils, a rich and beautiful widow who proposes to him in marriage. This seems to be Paul's lucky break of a lifetime, and he eagerly accepts. But the woman runs a strange business which will produce the decline and fall of the title.

What develops as a hilarious farce ends up being a sad story. Waugh aims his mockery at every person and system included in the novel. Education, prostitution, jail, politics and business are all the target of this first novel which promises much about the future work of Waugh. Recommended.

6 people found this helpful

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Paul G.

Okay, racially insensitive

Reviewed in the United States on July 10, 2019

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Right up front, there are racially insensitive passages in this book. Okay, grossly racist. But then the book completely savages everything it comes in contact with, the English aristocracy, the Established Church, the working class, et al. And it is funny.

6 people found this helpful

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NecessityofChoice

The fate of Naive in a World of Vice

Reviewed in the United States on February 4, 2020

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The hilarious preposterous of the plot is amazing to experience.

However, to have lived with the cynicism and derisive view of life exhibited by Waugh in this his first novel, would have been hell. I don't envy anyone in his orbit.

2 people found this helpful

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Waugh Draws First Blood

Reviewed in the United States on May 5, 2006

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Often the pleasure of reading first novels by noted authors is twigging onto vague themes and stylistic ideas explored with greater success in more mature works to come. But this, Evelyn Waugh's first novel published in 1928, has no youthful awkwardness to shed. It is a fully accomplished work that may as well be a novice's introduction to Waugh for the way it distills his uniquely sardonic, misanthropic style.

Paul Pennyfeather is an Oxford divinity student who comes to grief when some upper-class twits steal his trousers and get him expelled. With nowhere else to go, he accepts a teaching post at a Welsh boarding school, Llanabba, which caters to the problem children of the rich. It's not what you teach the children that's important, insists Llanabba's master, Dr. Fagan, but having what he calls "tone."

"Decline And Fall" has tone, too, a bloody whole lot of it. Waugh's depiction of the boarding school and its Welsh surroundings are presented in a series of deft one-liners offset only by delightfully meandering physical descriptions and a tortured tale worthy of Michael Palin's "Ripping Yarns" which raises the bar of comedic misery with every page.

At one point, the school decides to put on an impromptu field day to impress some VIP parents. Having not bothered to acquire hurdles or other track gear to speak of, the boys are lined up and told to run at the sound of the starting gun. This is done with a real gun, by an inebriated teacher who manages to shoot one of the titled youngsters in the foot.

"I knew that was going to happen," sighs the stricken boy's noble father.

"A most unfortunate beginning," comments Dr. Fagan.

"First blood to me!" cries the drunken teacher.

Waugh is very much in his element already here. You have here the foibles of airhead aristocrats, socially-correct men whose standards of civility make them easy prey for the fairer sex, and quasi-religious concerns expressed by those of little faith for whom Waugh had the clearest contempt.

"Once granted the first step, I can see that everything else follows - Tower of Babel, Babylonian captivity, Incarnation, Church, bishops, incense, everything - but what I couldn't see, and what I can't see now, is WHY did it all begin?" a would-be Anglican cleric tells Pennyfeather. Asking his bishop was no help, "he didn't think the point really arose as far as my practical duties as a parish priest were concerned."

Pennyfeather himself is very much in league with other Waugh protagonists, like Tony Last in "Handful Of Dust" and William Boot in "Scoop." He initiates nothing; instead things keep happening to him. He's accurately described at one point as a person "meant to stay in the seats" rather than risk a hard fall by getting too close to life's spinning axle.

Waugh's treatment of a black character in the book is off-putting, as other reviewers here note, though it should be added that the Welsh, "the only nation in the world that has produced no graphic or plastic art...they just sing...," come in for harsher scorn. The real weakness of the book as I see it comes when Pennyfeather leaves the school and takes up with a flighty noblewoman with a suspicious sideline. It's not a bad detour, in many ways the subplot is quite good, but Llanabba is the heart and soul of this book, and the farther away the novel moves from that, the weaker it becomes.

Yes, Waugh did mature and write deeper works in time. But his touch was never as sure, or his comic eye as sharp, as it is here.

4 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

Al

Well worth a read but....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 31, 2017

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Another tick on my list of books to read before I shuffle off this mortal coil.

I will not try to give any sort of synopsis, in order to avoid spoilers, but it is like an, at times immature, cross between something from Tom Sharpe, with chaos, confusion and farce, and Joseph Heller's "Catch 22", with Pennyfeather, a wide eyed, accepting and uncomplaining, Yossarian like innocent being subjected to all sorts of indignities and with the same characters, but in different incarnations and circumstances, popping up repeatedly.

It is a very well written easy read but, contrary to some of the reviews, I did not find it side splitting, laugh out loud funny; it has a good level of sardonic humour throughout and rolls on well, becoming a page turner for me.

Well worth a read but, to read and enjoy it, one has to accept that it is of its time and accept the casual (and, in the 21st century, so offensive) racism and misogyny.

14 people found this helpful

FunkyFrankie

Hilarious and beautifully written

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 5, 2021

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There are few examples of modern fiction that can make you laugh out loud like Decline and Fall. You have to remind yourself throughout the book that some of the characters are really quite dark and sinister. Waugh’s creation of Grimes as a character is a work of genius. I laughed until tears rolled down my face. So many numpties think that writing a book review is simply rehashing the plot, therefore no spoilers here. It’s a book about a young schoolmaster and his experiences at one of Britain’s less salubrious schools for boys. It’s incredibly funny. It’s fantastically politically incorrect. And it’s worth every penny.

2 people found this helpful

Kid Ferrous 🔴🟡🟢

Wickedly funny book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 24, 2021

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If you have only heard of Evelyn Waugh through “Brideshead Revisited” then even though “Decline and Fall” is by the same author, they are not alike, not even close. This was Waugh’s first book published in 1928 and is loosely based on his time at Oxford and as a teacher in North Wales. It follows the declining fortunes of Paul Pennyfeather and is a full frontal comedy which pokes tongue-in-cheek fun at the establishment. It can be compared with P.G.Woodhouse, it was meant to be funny, and it is!

2 people found this helpful

Barry Dougall

The Art of Waugh

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 21, 2021

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Misanthropic, misogynistic, highly politically incorrect as read today, the most improbable events described in this book are entertaining, and if not laugh out loud funny, provide many a chuckle and smile along the way. Fascinating to read the first published novel of a great English writer, a man who would seem to be lacking in much warmth, but adept in his coruscating observations of contemporary society.

Laszlo Nagy

burning fireworks

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 8, 2019

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For someone who is not a native born Englishman it is very (that means impossible) to get all the clues inside this books.

Therefore excuse me if I try just the same to get my impressions from the listenings to the CD Version of this book written down as good as it is possible for someone as described above.

Burning fireworks: Indeed there is so much of it in this book that you might easily get confused (Maybe even as an Englishman) at the beginning of this book and aks yourself what that furious flow of words is all about. Like in in music of Bach the strains of the (musical) thoughts mingle with each another and by being attentive, you get the joy of knowing which strain is connected with which other and develops into something new. The story is very much driven by dialogue and the delight for reader or listener is to keep the strains of these dialogues apart.

The main characters are Paul Pennyfeather and Lady Beastly-Cheating.

The Story starts quite "normal" so that everybody can catch up easily with the story's procedure. But the book makes clear that you have to stay close to the author's intentions. If you keep on trying to give the Story a Chance to develop itself you will be awarded by joy of having been lead by the author to the Point where he wanted you to be.

You will get a morale advise or lesson by an amoral story (and maybe even an amoral author).

The more you go into the book's story the more you walk in „impossible-land“. At least this was my impression where I started to ask the „is this possible“-question.

Evelyn Waugh is a moraliste who cannot help himself observing people and loosing time and nerves to make them better, what is a vain attempt. You will never succeed and you loose your time for People who loose their time voluntarily and without regret or thinking.

At the end of the book my Impression was, that Paul Pennyfeather awoke from a bad Dream. Everything what occured to him must have been just a bad dread, if not there were only one solution to human life -- despair.

So I had no other choice – not wanting to despair – then to declare the whole story as Peter Pennyfeather's dream, he awoke from – thank God – at the end.

Lady Beastly-Cheating is a medieval figure and stands as a Symbol of the Woman men Always like and want, but which turn out be cheating men who want to be cheated.

Paul Pennyfeather's last words suggests to me that it has been a Dream after all. "It's time for bed now".

We recollect dreams after having slept and being awoken. Peter's case is the opposite. He has dreamt before and goes to bed afterwards.

The more the book arrives to its end the more it is difficult to "explain" why something has happened just the way it did. So for me there is still obscurity within in the fact, why Peter Pennyfeather is put into jail. I did not find the answer until yet. Maybe someone else will.

For me definitively of advantage was the spoken version of the CD. I have had the opportunity to hear the words pronouned and to attribute words to the character who spoke them.

Burning fireworks means in this case the language of the "Roaring Twenties", when and whrere there is no time and everything is in haste and hurry. The language of each character is the escape from being only member and part of a machinery (civilisation but no culture) and the efford to maintain humain dignity in a play where there the actors are feathers and cheaters targets of whatever wind however. Driven or pushed. Taken or left behind.

Fireworks and language are shealds and arrows for those characters in this books who are condemned to be washed down, disappear without signs, or simply being shot or got out of the way. They prevent the characters of this book to be only peaces of a machinery. Used and thrown away.

Eventhough that's the fate of all the charachters except Peter Pennyfeather and Lady Beast-Cheating. .

Last words à propos religion in this book. Obviously it appears in the moral of this story: The (medieval) world is a woman who is beatiful in frontsite but an old woman at her backside. The beautiful young woman promises all and everything. The old woman cheats because she pretends to be young during the story and marries the old man the end. (Maltravers).

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