British · 1903–1966
Evelyn Waugh wielded satire like a scalpel. The British novelist dissected the pretensions of interwar society in comedies so precisely cruel they became classics: "Decline and Fall," "Vile Bodies," "A Handful of Dust." His conversion to Catholicism in 1930 added a moral seriousness to his comedy without dulling its edge. "Brideshead Revisited" surprised readers expecting mockery with an elegiac romance about faith and an aristocratic family's decline. Waugh's prose style—lapidary, exact, capable of registering both absurdity and grace—influenced generations of comic novelists.