Revised edition. Original red cloth lettered in gilt. Author's presentation copy, inscribed on the front endpaper, "For Father Devas from Evelyn Waugh 1945". A very good copy, slightly cocked, with a faded spine and wear to its ends.

A fine association copy of Waugh's best known work, inscribed to the priest Waugh found to give deathbed absolution to his friend Hubert Duggan, inspiring the deathbed scene at the climax of Brideshead. Waugh recalls bringing Father Devas to Duggan's bedside in his diary entry of 13 October 1943, "he gave Hubert absolution. Hubert said, 'Thank you father,' which was taken as his assent. "The affect of this on Waugh was profound.
"In concrete and immediate terms, the repentance and death of Hubert Duggan provided an obvious link between the secular, hedonistic world of Waugh's youth on which he looked with nostalgia and the enforced asceticism of the present - the first a preparation for the second - and between the physical deprivations and psychological disappointments and apprehensions of the present and the promise of a future in which all would in the providence of God be well." - Davis (Evelyn Waugh, Writer)
The incident was obviously the catalyst for Brideshead: Waugh's diary records starting work on the novel some nine days later, and the deathbed scene was, for Waugh, the very crux of the narrative, a view he makes plain in a letter to Ronald Knox of May 1945,
"I am delighted you became reconciled to B.R. in the end. It was, of course, all about the death bed. I was present at almost exactly that scene, with less extravagant decor, when a friend of mine whom we thought was in his final coma and stubbornly impenitent, whose womenfolk would only let the priest in because they thought him unconscious, did exactly that, making the sign of the cross. It was profoundly affecting and I wrote the book about that scene."
Waugh viewed and referred to Brideshead as his Magnum Opus and in a quest for perfection he tinkered with it right up to and beyond publication. It has been thought that this 'revised edition' was published in advance of the first trade edition. In a letter to Tom Driberg, Waugh suggests as much, "'Revised' from an early edition for for private circulation...". However, a comparison of early editions shows that differences from the first edition are present in the revised edition and later printings, suggesting that it was issued shortly after the first edition.

Stock ID: 35573