The Oxford Mail has published a feature length article on the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh. The project will launch next month with the publication of four volumes, including Precious Waughs, the first of 12 volumes of “personal writings.” These are co-edited by Alexander Waugh and Alan Bell. Alexander, who is General Editor of the project, explains to the Mail:
“I do hope the whole project can be completed in 10 years and I hope the publication of the first five volumes in the autumn will galvanise editors working on other volumes. With Brideshead my grandfather invented a way of looking at Oxford, a mellowness, and it was that TV series in the 1980s with its soft rich tones that imprinted itself on people’s minds and drove people back to the book. My daughter Mary graduated in French from Christ Church about a year ago and it wasn’t the idyllic dream of Brideshead at all – she worked extremely hard.”
The story continues with this background information:
The novelist’s biographer, Professor Martin Stannard of the University of Leicester, and the late Prof David Bradshaw, of Worcester College, Oxford, have been co-executive editors of the first five volumes, which will be published this autumn, with the next set due to appear in 2019. No other collection of a British novelist’s work has been undertaken on a comparable scale. Oxford University Press signed up The Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh in 2009.
This is the first time a schedule for the next volumes after the first five has been mentioned. There appears to be some misunderstanding on precisely when the first volumes will be issued. The Mail and OUP list the date at 14th September but the Amazon.co.uk website give 1st September as the publication date. Publication in the USA is scheduled for November. The story concludes with a mention of OUP’s local plans for marking the start of publication:
To celebrate the first five volumes, the Bodleian’s Weston Library will be hosting an exhibition of Evelyn Waugh’s Oxford, curated by Barbara Cooke, from August 26 to October 22.
The Mail’s story is accompanied by a gallery of photos and drawings. There is one photo of Evelyn Waugh signing books in an Oxford bookshop which I do not recall having seen before and several drawings from the childhood diaries which may be appearing for the first time.
