Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966) was an English novelist, journalist, travel writer, and one of the most distinctive satirical voices of the twentieth century. Educated at Hertford College, Oxford, he briefly worked as a schoolmaster before establishing himself as a writer. His fiction is celebrated for its precise prose, mordant humor, memorable characters, and unsparing observations of class, fashion, ambition, and social convention. His novels include Vile Bodies, A Handful of Dust, Scoop, Brideshead Revisited, and the Sword of Honour trilogy. Decline and Fall, his first published novel, introduced the comic style and sharp social vision that would define much of his career.