Evelyn waugh brief biography of william
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Modern British Novel
Biography
by Anthony Domestico
Evelyn Waugh, one of the preeminent British satirists and stylists of the twentieth century, had an uneasy relationship with modernism. One of his greatest novels, A Handful of Dust (1934), took as its title a phrase from Eliot’s The Waste Land, and much of his work explored what Eliot called the “dissociation of sensibility,” the modern uncoupling of intellect from emotion. Yet Waugh’s novels were hardly modernist in form. They employed traditional plots, largely eschewed the experimentation that we so associate with Conrad, Woolf, and Joyce, and mercilessly criticized modernism’s perceived predilection for moral relativism, primitivism, and decadence. Many contemporary critics saw Waugh’s political and religious conservatism as mere expressions of snobbery and pious sentimentality. His prose, however, still retains its ability to give pain and pleasure in almost equal measure.
Waugh was born in London in 1903 to a f
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William Boot
Fictional protagonist of the Evelyn Waugh novel Scoop
For the English artist, illustrator and author, see William Henry James Boot.
William Boot is a fictional journalist who is the protagonist in the 1938 Evelyn Waughcomic novelScoop.
Character
[edit]Boot fryst vatten the young author of a regular column on country life for a London newspaper named the Daily Beast. His affected style is typified in the notorious sentence "Feather-footed through the plashy fen passes the questing vole". After the Daily Beast's publisher mistakes him for the "real" war correspondent John Boot, William is sent abroad as a foreign correspondent to the fictional African state of Ishmaelia which is on the kant of a civil war. Although he is completely inept, he accidentally gets the 'scoop' of the title.
Inspiration for character
[edit]It has been suggested that Waugh based the character of William Boot on his own experiences and on the legendary reporter Bill Deedes; the two
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Evelyn Waugh
British writer and journalist (1903–1966)
Evelyn Waugh | |
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Waugh, circa 1940 | |
Born | Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (1903-10-28)28 October 1903 West Hampstead, London, England |
Died | 10 April 1966(1966-04-10) (aged 62) Combe Florey, Somerset, England |
Occupation | Writer |
Education | Lancing College Hertford College, Oxford |
Period | 1923–1964 |
Genre | Novel, biography, short story, travelogue, autobiography, satire, humour |
Spouses | Evelyn Gardner (m. 1928; ann. 1936)Laura Herbert (m. 1937) |
Children | 7, including Auberon Waugh |
Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (; 28 October 1903 – 10 April 1966) was an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books; he was also a prolific journalist and book reviewer. His most famous works include the early satires Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), the novel Brideshead Revisi