Already known for such scathing satires as Decline and Fall and A Handful of Dust, Evelyn Waugh earned increased popularity and recognition with the publication of the more serious Brideshead Revisited in 1945. In this rich and lengthy novel Waugh departs from satire and concentrates nostalgically on the innocence of prewar English life and its gradual corruption in the decades between the wars. Drawing on both personal experience and social history, Waugh creates the world of the aristocratic Marchmains, glimpsed through the eyes of the naive and bourgeois narrator, Charles Ryder, who is increasingly seduced by their seemingly idyllic way of life. Charles's infatuation with his classmate Sebastian, the first member of the clan he meets, and his subsequent romance with Sebastian's sister Julia form the core of a tale whose grand style and themes greatly appealed to the sensibilities of an audience grown accustomed to wartime rationing and deprivation. The romantic surface of the novel, however, is soon exposed to reveal the characters' deep unhappiness and fragmentation. The novel sensitively addresses the characters' struggle to cope with the loss of their world and their search for one in which they can be whole again. In Brideshead Revisited: The Past Redeemed Robert Murray David brings twenty-five years of critical and bibliographical study of Evelyn Waugh to this first full-length study of the novel. David focuses on the ways in which the structure of the novel, whereby various chapters and characters echo or qualify one another, supports the themes of memory, love, and moral and aesthetic experience. Davis explores how the contrasts between past and present inform the development of each chapter and the consciousness of Charles Ryder, observing Waugh's careful distinctions between Charles as first-person narrator and as narrated actor. One of the most important contributions to Waugh scholarship in recent years, Brideshead Revisited: The Past Redeemed provides a sound and engaging analysis of the novel's lasting appeal and artistic complexity. - Dust jacket.