Oxford University Press has released additional information on the first volumes of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh to be published later this year. See previous posts. This includes more detailed descriptions of the contents as well as the cover art for two of the volumes (Rossetti and A Little Learning). There are also biographical sketches of the editors, and the table of contents for one of the volumes (Rossetti) has been posted (click on “Table of Contents” to left of book cover). Here’s an example of the new descriptive information that is now available. This relates to volume 29, Essays, Articles and Reviews 1922-1934:
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.
Some of this new information (e.g., more detailed contents description and cover art) is also posted on Amazon.com, which is offering modest discounts on some volumes.
