Brideshead Revisited.: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder. A Novel.

London: Chapman & Hall Ltd,, 1945. O God, make me good, but not yet First trade edition, first impression, of Waugh's most enduring novel, in a well-preserved example of the notoriously fragile jacket produced to war economy standards. Waugh himself repeatedly referred to this novel as his magnum opus. Brideshead Revisited was written from January to June 1944, while Waugh was recovering after breaking his leg during parachute training in December of the previous year. The author revealed in his autobiography that the story "portrays some aspects of my Oxford life" (Waugh, p. 191); the character of Sebastian Flyte was based on memories of Alastair Graham, one of Waugh's best friends and "romances" during his university years. Exploring the theme of Catholicism for the first time, the novel was described by Waugh as "an attempt to trace the workings of the divine purpose in a pagan world, in the lives off an English Catholic family, half-paganised themselves, in the world of 1929-39" (Wilson, p. 108). Octavo. Original red cloth, spine lettered in gilt. With dust jacket. Foot of spine faded, small bump to lower edge of rear cover, binding otherwise sharp, contents clean, short close tear to upper margin of pp. 47-74; jacket lightly rubbed, spine panel toned, head of spine panel and corners chipped, not-price clipped: a very good copy in like jacket. Evelyn Waugh, A Little Learning: the First Volume of an Autobiography, 1964; John Howard Wilson, Evelyn Waugh: a Literary Biography, 1996.