Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh was born in London in 1903. The son of a publisher, Waugh was educated at Lancing College and then at Hertford College, Oxford. Originally trained as a teacher, Waugh quit teaching to pursue writing full time and published his first work of fiction in 1925.

Waugh married Evelyn Gardner in 1928. He converted to Catholicism in 1930 after his first marriage failed. He married Laura Herbert in 1937, and they had seven children.

Waugh is known primarily for his satirical novels, such as Decline and Fall (1928) and A Handful of Dust (1934), which criticized London society in the early twentieth century. He also produced biographies, travel books, and short stories. He is perhaps best-known for his novel Brideshead Revisited (1945).

Evelyn Waugh died on April 10, 1966.

Sources:

D. Marcel DeCoste. The Vocation of Evelyn Waugh: Faith and Art in the Post-War Fiction (London: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd, 2015)

“Evelyn Arthur St John Waugh,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, accessed 30 October 2010.