Gallagher, Donatus (2018) Essays, Articles, and Reviews 1922-1934. The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh, 26 . Oxford University Press, New York, NY, USA.

Preview

PDF (Front pages) - Supplemental Material Download (2MB) | Preview

Abstract

This volume is part of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh critical edition, which brings together all Waugh's published and previously unpublished writings for the first time with comprehensive introductions and annotation, and a full account of each text's manuscript development and textual variants. The edition's General Editor is Alexander Waugh, Evelyn Waugh's grandson and editor of the twelve-volume Personal Writings sequence.

This first volume of Evelyn Waugh's Articles, Essays, and Reviews contains every traceable piece of journalism that research could uncover written by Waugh between January 1922, when he first went up to Oxford, and December 1934, when he had recently returned from British Guiana and was enjoying the runaway success of A Handful of Dust.

Long interred in fashion magazines, popular newspapers, sober journals, undergraduate reviews, and BBC archives, 110 of the 170 pieces in the volume have never before been reprinted. Several typescripts of articles and reviews are published here for the first time, as are a larger number of unsigned pieces never before identified as Waugh's. Original texts, so easily distorted in the production process, have been established as far as possible using manuscript and other controls. The origins of the works are explored, and annotations to each piece seek to assist the modern reader.

The volume embraces university journalism; essays from Waugh's years of drift after Oxford; forcefully emphatic articles and contrasting sophisticated reviews written for the metropolitan press from 1928 to 1930 (the most active and enterprising years of Waugh's career); reports for three newspapers of a coronation in Abyssinia and essays for The Times on the condition of Ethiopia and on British policy in Arabia. Finally, in early 1934 Waugh travelled for three months in remote British Guiana, resulting in nine travel articles and A Handful of Dust, acclaimed as one of the most distinguished novels of the century. Waugh was 19 when his first Oxford review appeared, 31 when the Spectator printed his last review of 1934. This is a young writer's book, and the always lucid articles and reviews it presents read as fresh and lively, as challenging and opinionated, as the day they first appeared.

Research Statement

Research Background	In 2009 Uni. of Leicester received £822,000 and OUP c. £200,000 from the UK AHRC to publish The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh, a recognition of Waugh's stature as novelist and general writer. The 43 vol. CWEW includes 4 vols of 'Essays, Articles, and Reviews', which I am editing. The editorial principles of CWEW are to 'historicize' texts, provide an 'authoritative repository' of primary material, and achieve 'the most rigorous scholarly standards'. The aims specific to this first volume are to discover every piece of short non-fiction Waugh wrote 1922–1934 and to define the contexts—personal, literary, commercial, intellectual—that shaped them.
Research Contribution	Essays, Articles, and Reviews 1922 –1934 contains 168 pieces, some unpublished, many unsigned, 56 previously reprinted, 112 quite new. Original research occupies at least 170 of the 592 pages. It establishes authorship of unsigned pieces, collates copy text with MS and other printed versions, describes EW’s interest in subjects of articles along with negotiations about content, length, and price; it also locates topical articles within their contexts, within broader currents of thought and relevant history, and within EW's works. Thorough annotations clarify economical silences, unfamiliar allusions and references to texts.
Research Significance	The years 1922–34 saw the high noon of Modernism when writers like Eliot, Joyce, Woolf made the unconscious the test. Recent studies of Modernisms analyse works that have not usually been called modern: see Nicholls, Wright etc. Young EW, unlike his older self, was in tune with Modern writers and social policies, e.g. divorce, sexual freedom. But as an art-novelist inventing his own form of the novel he declared his form 'modern'—another of today's Modernisms. EW's early journalism, though predominantly literary, aesthetic and travel oriented, in its emphasis on Youth evokes the post-WWI mood, and a post-Slump broadcast memorably captures the despair and frustration of a generation.
Item ID:	52867
Item Type:	Book (Creative Work)
ISBN:	978-0-19-968344-4
Funders:	Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) UK
Date Deposited:	12 Jun 2018 03:28
FoR Codes:	19 STUDIES IN CREATIVE ARTS AND WRITING > 1999 Other Studies in Creative Arts and Writing > 199999 Studies in Creative Arts and Writing not elsewhere classified @ 100%
SEO Codes:	95 CULTURAL UNDERSTANDING > 9502 Communication > 950203 Languages and Literature @ 100%
Downloads:	Total: 347 Last 12 Months: 22
	More Statistics