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A Study Guide for Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop"
A Study Guide for Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop"
A Study Guide for Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop"
Ebook40 pages36 minutes

A Study Guide for Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop"

By Gale and Cengage

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A Study Guide for Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 14, 2016
ISBN9781535832663
A Study Guide for Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop"

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    Book preview

    A Study Guide for Evelyn Waugh's "Scoop" - Gale

    1

    Scoop

    Evelyn Waugh

    1938

    Introduction

    Evelyn Waugh's Scoop (London, 1938) is a satire on journalism. It is based on Waugh's stint as a war correspondent for the London Daily Mail in Abyssinia (now Ethiopia) in 1935, during which he covered the war between Abyssinia and Italy. Waugh admitted that he had no aptitude for war reporting, but he did observe closely the activities of his fellow journalists. The result was a satirical, farcical novel that takes lighthearted but deadly aim at the newspaper industry and the journalistic profession.

    The plot rests on some comic twists of fortune. Lord Copper, the arrogant and ignorant owner of the Daily Beast, sends out by mistake a naïve writer of nature columns, William Boot, to cover the war in the fictional East African country of Ishmaelia. Geographically, at least, Ishmaelia is identical with Abyssinia. William gets some quick lessons in the devious way of journalists, who are always trying to outwit their colleagues and deliver a scoop. Helped by a series of lucky events, William gets several major scoops himself and returns to London as a world-renowned reporter. But it all means nothing to him, and he is happy to return to his country home, the isolated and dilapidated Boot Magna Hall, where his many eccentric relatives live.

    Author Biography

    Evelyn Waugh was born on October 28, 1903, in Hampstead, London, England, the son of Arthur

    (an editor and publisher) and Catherine Charlotte (Raban) Waugh. He was enrolled at Lancing, a preparatory school, in 1917, where he wrote poetry, edited the school magazine, and was president of the debating society.

    Waugh won a scholarship to Hertford College, Oxford, in 1922. At Oxford, he wrote poetry and stories for undergraduate magazines but, because of financial difficulties, he left the university in 1924 without graduating. He enrolled at Heatherley's Art School, and in 1925 he became a secondary school teacher in Wales and then in Buckinghamshire, England.

    In 1927, Waugh married Evelyn Gardner. In 1928, his first novel, Decline and Fall, appeared. This was a satire on the English upper classes and the English educational system. While Waugh was writing his second novel, Vile Bodies (1930), he discovered that his wife was having an affair, so he filed for a divorce.

    In 1930, he converted to Roman Catholicism, and he spent much of his time between 1929 and 1937 traveling. He visited the Mediterranean, Ethiopia (then known as Abyssinia), and North Africa, the West

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