伊夫林·沃被譽為“英語文學史上最具摧毀力和最在成果的諷刺小說傢之一”。伊夫林·沃1903年10月28日生於英國漢普斯特德，其父阿瑟·沃係英國著名齣版商兼文學批評傢，1928年發錶瞭第一部長篇小說《衰落與瓦解》，一舉成名。此後，沃專心寫作，先後齣版瞭長篇小說20餘部，短篇小說集兩部，以及書信集數部，其中被譽為佳作的有：《衰落與瓦解》，《一抔土》（1934）、《舊地重遊》（1945）、《榮譽之劍》（1965）等。沃曾於40年代後期為《舊地重遊》搬上銀幕一事訪問好萊塢，並根據此間搜集的素材創作瞭《受愛戴的》（1948），這是他最暢銷的長篇小說之一。

Evelyn Waugh’s most celebrated novel is a memory drama about the intense entanglement of the narrator, Charles Ryder, with a great Anglo-Catholic family. Written during World War II, the novel mourns the passing of the aristocratic world Waugh knew in his youth and vividly recalls the sensuous plea­sures denied him by wartime austerities; in so doing it also provides a profound study of the conflict between the demands of religion and the desires of the flesh. At once romantic, sensuous, comic, and somber, Brideshead Revisited transcends Waugh’s familiar satiric exploration of his cast of lords and ladies, Catholics and eccentrics, artists and misfits, revealing him to be an elegiac, lyrical novelist of the utmost feeling and lucidity.

The edition reprinted here contains Waugh’s revisions, made in 1959, and his preface to the revised edition.