Author: Evelyn Waugh

Publisher: Penguin Modern Classics

First published: 1934

Setting: Warwickshire and London, UK and Boa Vista, Brazil
Read in March 2014

My Rating ★★★★  4.0

My Waterstones Review

“This author wrote the end before the beginning”

A top 100 modern day classic written in English. Evelyn Waugh takes a satirical dig at the landed gentry and the decay of English society, the disintegration of moral standards and the resulting shallow set of values. It is a tragedy and comedy which pursues familiar Waugh territory until two-thirds through there is a disconcerting shift from England to S.America which pitches our unlikely hero Lord Tony Last, an English society bore, into an equally unlikely position of Amazonian explorer.

Written in both serialized and novel form this edition has both endings. The introduction will show that the ending was written as a short story and published under the title of ‘The Man Who Liked Dickens’ ahead of its full novel.

Book Review

In January 2010 Time Magazine published a list of the top 100 books written in English since 1923 and amongst many modern day classics you will find A Handful of Dust. Similarly it made the top 100 best novels of the 20th century in the Modern Library list coming in at number 34.

Written on the theme of the betrayed romantic A Handful of Dust starts with an introduction of the insignificant and shallow John Beaver who at Brat’s club had managed to wangle a weekend invite to Lord and Lady Last’s Gothic mansion Hetton Abbey. Taken by surprise, Tony makes himself scarce with duties around his beloved estate leaving Lady Brenda to entertain John Beaver. Lady Brenda considers John rather pathetic but nonetheless he has taken her fancy. In one of Lady Brenda’s weekday trips to London there is a chance lunchtime meeting with John’s mother who is selling some small flats in Belgravia. We soon find that Lady Brenda has invited John Beaver to Lady Polly Cockpurse’s party and the start of the affair is set. Speculation amongst Society is rife and is confirmed when Lady Brenda lets a flat and starts an Economics course in order to remain in London for longer periods.

The origins of a A Handful of Dust unusually starts with the ending. In December 1923 Evelyn Waugh embarked on a 3 month trip to British Guiana in S.America and this resulted in the short story ‘The Man Who Liked Dickens’ which was published in America. A Handful of Dust followed with a serialized version published in an American Magazine and called ‘A Flat in London’, this had a much closer affinity with the earlier chapters but which required the alternative ending due to the earlier publishing of ‘The Man Who Liked Dickens’. The novel version of A Handful of Dust has a disconcerting shift from England to S.America to bind in the short story in the chapter called Du Côté de Chez Todd.  

In A Handful of Dust Evelyn Waugh gives a satirical dig at the landed gentry, the decay of English society, the disintegration of social and moral standards and the resulting set of shallow values. This is both a tragedy and a comedy with the unlikely hero of an English society bore.