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Evelyn Waugh's irresistible first novel (New York Times) is a brilliant and hilarious satire of English school life in the 1920s.

2024 Reprint of the 1947 Edition. Decline and Fall is Waugh's first novel published in 1928. It is based, in part, on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales. It... Read Full Overview

Subtitled "A Novel of Many Manners, " Evelyn Waugh's notorious first novel lays waste the "heathen idol" of British sportsmanship, the cultured perfection of Oxford, and the inviolable honor codes of the English gentleman.

'His first, most perfect novel ... ruthlessly comic' John Mortimer, Guardian

(Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) Decline and Fall (1928) was Evelyn Waugh's immensely successful first novel, and it displays not only all of its author's customary satiric genius and flair for unearthing the ridiculous in human nature, but also a youthful willingness to train... Read Full Overview

2024 Reprint of the 1947 Edition. Decline and Fall is Waugh's first novel published in 1928. It is based, in part, on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales. It... Read Full Overview

Decline and Fall is based, in part, on Waugh's schooldays at Lancing College, undergraduate years at Hertford College, Oxford, and his experience as a teacher at Arnold House in north Wales.

Modest and unassuming theology student Paul Pennyfeather falls victim to the... Read Full Overview