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Brideshead Revisited
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Brideshead Revisited (1945) (edit title/settings)

by Evelyn Waugh (Author) (edit contributors)

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Description edit see section history

Charles Ryder, a lonely student at Oxford, is captivated by the outrageous and decadent Sebastian Flyte. Invited to Brideshead, Sebastian's magnificent family home, Charles welcomes the attentions of its eccentric, artistic inhabitants the Marchmains, becoming infatuated with them and the... read more

Summary edit see section history

Evelyn Waugh's best-loved novel (first published in 1945) and the basis for the ITV Granada television production, Brideshead Revisited, in 1981.
It is the epic story of a great Catholic family in a doomed aristocratic age prior to the second world war. Dubbed by New York Times as "Waugh's... read more (warning: may contain spoilers)

Evelyn Waugh's best-loved novel (first published in 1945) and the basis for the ITV Granada television production, Brideshead Revisited, in 1981.
It is the epic story of a great Catholic family in a doomed aristocratic age prior to the second world war. Dubbed by New York Times as "Waugh's most deeply felt novel," Brideshead Revisited has remained a favourite with readers for over sixty years.
In haunting prose it captures the dying years of an era of British aristocracy and opulence, which would never again return after the war. Another major theme, as Waugh says in his preface (1959) to a modified re-issue of the novel, is "the operation of divine grace on a group of diverse but closely connected characters."

Characters/People edit see section history

  • Sebastian Flyte: Troubled scion of an English upper-crust, Catholic family.
  • Julia: Sebastian's sister.
  • Charles Ryder: Sebastian Flyte's best friend. Drawn into the web of the disturbed and dysfunctional Marchmain clan. Narrator of the story
  • Lady Marchmain: Matriarch. Her family, her Church and her traditions are held rigidly in her controlling hand.
  • Mr Samgrass: He intialy takes charge of writing a book on Lady Marchmain's three brothers and then is appointed to travel and take care of Sebastian.
  • Boy Mulcaster: Add a description of this character.
  • Bridey: Sebastian's Brother and the eldest son. Bridey is a short form of Brideshead.
  • Mr Wilcox
  • Cordelia: Sebstian's youngest sister
  • Hooper: in prologue, gets his hair cut
  • Mr Ryder
  • Edward 'Ned' Ryder: Charles' father
  • Lord Sebastian Flyte: Son of Lord and Lady Marchmain. Charles' friend, whom he met at Oxford.
  • Brideshead
  • Lady Julia Flyte: Sebastian's sister
  • Celia
  • Lord 'Bridey' Brideshead: Eldest son of the Flyte family. As oldest son and his father's heir, he has the courtesy title "Earl of Brideshead"
  • Sammy
  • Lady Cordelia Flyte: Youngest of the Flyte siblings
  • Mgr Bell
  • Alex
  • Alexander Flyte, The Marquess of Marchmain: Lord Marchmain is father to Bridey, Sebastian, Julia and Cordelia. He and his wife are estranged and he lives abroad in Venice with his mistress, Cara
  • Teresa Flyte, The Marchioness of Marchmain: Lady Marchmain is mother of Bridey, Sebastian, Julia and Cordelia. When Lord Marchmain left the family, she remained at Brideshead - both mistress and matriarch of the sprawling estate.
  • Anthony Blanche: Flamboyant, witty and, at times, brutally perceptive and honest, Anthony is an openly homosexual friend of Sebastian's whom Charles meets when he attends a dinner in Sebastian's rooms at Oxford.
  • Cara: Lord Marchmain's mistress, with whom he lives in Venice
  • Lord Marchmain
  • Viscount 'Boy' Mulcaster: Another friend of Sebastian's at Oxford. "Boy" is rather gauche, bumbling and often thoughtless. In him Waugh gives us a sharply satirical portrait of the upper classes in Britain at that time.
  • Rex Mottram: Rex, a Canadian, is highly ambitious. Seeking both wealth and social position, he marries Lady Julia — a marriage on his part of convenience, not love.
  • 'Sammy' Samgrass: A Fellow of All Souls College at Oxford. Mr Samgrass is enlisted by Lady Marchmain to bear-lead Sebastian and protect the young man from committing the more extreme excesses to which he is prone. This Samgrass tries to do with very limited success. He is nevertheless keen to stay in this role, as his connection with the aristorcracy, through Lady Marchmain, furthers his own ambitions.
  • 'Nanny' Hawkins: Much loved nanny and carer of all four Marchmain children in their youth. She has retired, but continues to live on at Brideshead, enjoying a comfortable but quiet existence, delighted to see the children when they come to visit.
  • Celia Ryder: Charles' wife and 'Boy' Mulcaster's sister. Charles marries her largely as a matter of convenience, which leads her to seek comfort in various other relationships. Charles then uses these as an "excuse" for his own betrayal of their marriage.
  • Wilcox
  • Kurt
  • Beryl
  • Mukaster
  • Aloysius: Sebastian's teddy bear.
  • Plender
  • Jasper
  • Hayter
  • Mowbray
  • Ma Mayfield
  • Mr. Kramm
  • Adrian Porson
  • Lunt
  • Collins
  • Mrs. Muspratt
  • Bratt
  • Mrs. Champion
  • Mrs. Abel
  • Robin
  • Hardcastle
  • Effie
  • Stefanie
Show all 53 characters
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Quotes edit see section history

  • “I should like to bury something precious in every place where I've been happy and then, when I'm old and ugly and miserable, I could come back and dig it up and remember.”
    Sebastian Flyte
  • “He did not fail in love, but he lost the joy of it.”
  • “Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman's day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour.”
  • “To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.”
  • “...Conversation should be like juggling; up go the balls and the plates, up and over, in and out, good solid objects that glitter in the footlights and fall with a bang if you miss them. But when dear Sebastian speaks it is like a little sphere of soapsud drifting off the end of an old clay pipe, anywhere, full of rainbow light for a secnd and then - phut! vanished, with nothing left at all, nothing.”
    Anthony Blanche
  • “"My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. These memories, which are my life—for we possess nothing certainly except the past—were always with me. Like the pigeons of St. Mark’s, they were everywhere, under my feet, singly, in pairs, in little honey-voiced congregations, nodding, strutting, winking, rolling the tender feathers of their necks, perching sometimes, if I stood still, on my shoulder or pecking a broken biscuit from between my lips; until, suddenly, the noon gun boomed and in a moment, with a flutter and sweep of wings, the pavement was bare and the whole sky above dark with a tumult of fowl. Thus it was that morning."”
  • “... 'perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow whcih turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.”
  • “She seemed to say 'Look at me. I have done my share. I am beautiful. It is something quite out of the ordinary, this beauty of mine. I am made for delight. But what do I get out of it? Where is my reward?' That was the change in her from ten years ago; that, indeed, was her reward, this haunting, this magical sadness which spoke straight to the heart and struck silence; it was the completion of her beauty.”
  • “What do you suppose Lord Sebastian wanted? A hairbrush for his teddy-bear; it had to have very stiff bristles, not, my Lord Sebastian said, to brush him with, but to threaten him with a spanking when he was sulky. He bought a very nice one with an ivory back and he's having 'Aloysius' engraved on it - that's the bear's name.”
  • “Where can we hide in fair weather, we orphans of the storm?”
    Julia

Setting & Locations edit see section history

This book is set in England and spans the 1920's-1940's.
Show all 20 settings

First Sentence edit see section history

"I HAVE been here before," I said; I had been there before; first with Sebastian more than twenty years ago on a cloudless day in June, when the ditches were white with fool's-parsly and meadowsweet and the air heavy with all the scents of summer; it was a day of peculiar splendour, such as our climate affords once or twice a year, when leaf and flower and bird and sun-lit stone and shadow seem all to proclaim the glory of God; and though I had been there so often, in so many moods, it was to that first visit that my heart returned on this, my latest.

Table of Contents edit see section history

Preface
Prologue
Book One: Et in arcadia ego
Chapters 1- 5
Book Two: Brideshead deserted
Chapters 1 - 3
Book Three: A twitch upon the thread
Chapters 1 - 5
Epilogue

Series & Lists edit see section history

This is book 90 of 96 in Newsweek's Top 100 Books: The Meta-List. (authoritative list)

Preceded by The Varieties of Religious Experience, and followed by Silent Spring.

This is book 80 of 93 in Modern Library's 100 Best Novels: The Board's List. (authoritative list)

Preceded by A Room with a View, and followed by The Adventures of Augie March.

This is book 88 of 98 in Modern Library's 100 Best Novels: Reader's List. (authoritative list)

Preceded by Citizen of the Galaxy, and followed by Light in August.

This is book 45 of 196 in BBC 'Big Read' Top 200 Novels, 2003. (authoritative list)

Preceded by The Count of Monte Cristo, and followed by Animal Farm.

This book is in TIME Magazine Top 100 English-Language Novels. (community list)
This is book 49 of 96 in Waterstone's Top 100 Books of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)

Preceded by Howards End, and followed by A Suitable Boy.

This is book 26 of 95 in Telegraph Top 100 Books, 2008. (authoritative list)

Preceded by The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, and followed by Crime and Punishment.

This is book 74 of 91 in The Novel 100: A Ranking of the Greatest Novels of All Time, 2004. (authoritative list)

Preceded by A Farewell to Arms.

This is book 563 of 1272 in 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die. (authoritative list)

Preceded by The Bridge on the Drina, and followed by Animal Farm.

This is book 144 of 214 in Best English-Language Fiction of the 20th Century. (authoritative list)

Preceded by White Noise, and followed by A High Wind in Jamaica.

This book is in Best Books of All Time. (community list)
This book is in Random Synapses: 100 Book Reading Challenge (2011). (community list)

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

  1. Evelyn Waugh (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Original Language: English
Publisher: Chapman & Hall
Country: United Kingdom
Publication Date: 1945
ISBN: 978 0 141 03686 1
Page Count: 336

Classification edit see section history

Movie Connections edit see section history

More Books Like This edit see section history

   
  • The End of the Affair
  • The Heart of the Matter

Books That Cite This Book edit see section history

   
  • Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgendered Literature

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