1945 Edition of Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh – Hardcover with Dust Jacket

Title: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder
Author: Evelyn Waugh
Illustrator/Artist: Lester K. Peterson (Dust Jacket Design)
Genre: Classic Fiction / Historical Fiction / Modernist Literature
Edition: 1945 Book-of-the-Month Club Edition (First US trade edition, first printing state)
Publisher: Little, Brown and Company, Boston

Immerse yourself in the grand, fading elegance of the British aristocracy between the world wars in Evelyn Waugh’s crowning literary achievement. Told through the nostalgic lens of Captain Charles Ryder, the story opens on a dreary wartime deployment during World War II when Charles realizes his unit has been stationed at Brideshead Castle. This ancestral home triggers a flood of memories from his youth, beginning with his days at Oxford University in the 1920s. It was there that Charles first encountered the charming and deeply troubled Sebastian Flyte, who introduced him to the opulent yet suffocatingly complex world of the wealthy, Catholic Marchmain family.

As the years unfold, Charles finds his life inextricably bound to the family, eventually falling in love with Sebastian's independent sister, Julia. Waugh explores themes of religious faith, high-society decadence, art, and the inevitable passage of time against the backdrop of an old European order on the brink of collapse. Because the novel was written during the height of a world at war, it carries an acute, poetic sense of longing and psychological fatigue that captures the end of an era.

Author Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh (1903 – 1966): An English novelist, biographer, travel writer, and journalist, one of the greatest satirical prose stylists of the 20th century. Born in London into a literary family, he was educated at Oxford University before rising to fame with sharp, witty early satires such as Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust. During World War II, Waugh actively served in the British Royal Marines and was among the first to volunteer for the elite Commando division. He famously penned Brideshead Revisited while on military leave, channeling his firsthand anxieties about the destruction of traditional British heritage into the text. In 1930 he converted to Catholicism, a spiritual transition that reshaped his worldview and infused his later works with intricate theological conflicts.

Artist Lester K. Peterson: An American graphic artist and commercial illustrator active during the mid-20th century, best remembered for designing iconic, era-defining book covers for major publishing houses. Peterson was commissioned by Little, Brown and Company to design the dust jacket for Brideshead for its 1945 American release.

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Condition*: Very good/Very Good. Dust jacket: Light edgewear; chipped, top right corner; open tear at head of the spine, closed tear and small chip at bottom; closed tear on the back, upper edge; small stain on the back, lower left corner. Black-embossed red cloth cover boards. Pages: Light tanning around edges else pages are clean, complete, and undamaged.