An article by Waugh scholar Dr Naomi Milthorpe is published in the latest issue of the academic journal The Space Between: Literature and Culture 1914-1945, v. 12 (2016). See earlier post. This is entitled: “A Secret House: Evelyn Waugh’s Book Collection.” Here’s an abstract taken from the journal:
This article examines Evelyn Waugh’s private library, reading his habits of book collection as a particular mode of late modernist practice. In private and public writing particularly during the Second World War, Waugh the book collector is simultaneously consumer, producer, and cultural combatant. Indeed, Waugh’s collection practices parallel his satiric practices: both satire and collection are guided by the impulse to discriminate, connoting both the pejorative and elitist senses of exclusion, but also selection, deliberation, and distinction. Waugh’s careful assemblage of a library at odds with mainstream literary culture proffers a striking case study of the contested cultural landscape of England in the space between, and after, the two world wars.
The full article is available online at the links above. If these do not open, a subscription may be needed. This will require registration on the journal’s website, but it is free of charge. Dr Milthorpe is among those scheduled to speak at the Evelyn Waugh Conference in May at the Huntington Library near Pasadena.
