Evelyn Waugh

A signed first edition, first printing of Decline and Fall by Evelyn Waugh.

• Evelyn Waugh (English).
• United Kingdom: Chapman and Hall, 1928.
• Signed by Evelyn Waugh in his elaborate hand without dedication.
• Beneath Waugh’s signature is the inscription ‘Stolen from John Betjeman’ in Betjeman’s own hand.
• In the supplied dust wrapper.

On the relationship between Waugh and Betjeman (taken from page 73 of A. N. Wilson’s Betjeman):

“Waugh, three years older than Betjeman, had been introduced to him at Biddesden by Diana Guinness. he moved in the sam circles of Bowra, Irish country houses, and upper-class bohemia. By the time Betjeman came down from Oxford, Waugh had published his remarkable life of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and made a notable hit with his hilarious first novel, Decline and Fall. The relationship between the two men was edgy, perhaps best summarised by Waugh himself in a letter to Betjeman’s wife on 7 January 1950 – ‘my love to John. Though he doesn’t love me as I love him'.”

From Eade, Evelyn Waugh: A Life Revisited: "The two reviewed each other’s works, and corresponded on literature and religion. Though they clashed on religious issues, their aesthetics were similar, both abhorring modern architecture and town planning, and admiring Gothic Revival decoration and furniture."