One of the best-loved and popular English novelists of the twentieth century, Evelyn Waugh was born in London in 1903. He attended Hertford College at Oxford and started his career as a school teacher and artist. He very quickly turned to a life as a writer, both in travel writing and as a novelist. His first book in 1928, following a few independent essays he published on the Pre-Raphaelites, was on Dante Gabriel Rossetti, a prominent Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet. The same year he published his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was a farce based on his experience as a school teacher. As time went on, he published more books that got darker while still falling into the satirical humorist theme. His 1930 novel, Vile Bodies, propelled Waugh to fame and his satirical pieces began being in high demand from publishers around the UK. 

During World War II, Waugh fought in the Royal Marines and the Royal Horse Guards, and his time in the war led his novels to get a little more serious while still keeping the witty satirical tone. Many of his books at the time were reflective of the life he led up to that point, and were what shot him not only to wider recognition but marked his spot in literary history as a controversial, satirical, and hilarious thinker. He married twice and had seven children. Waugh died in 1966 at the age of 62.