Decline and Fall
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Decline and Fall is a novel by the English author Evelyn Waugh. It was his first novel and was based, in part, on his own experience as a teacher in Wales. It was published in 1928.
The novel tells the story of Paul Pennyfeather, a student at the fictional Scone College Oxford who is sent down for inadvertantly running through the college grounds without his trousers. Having defaulted on the conditions of his inheritance he is forced to take a job teaching at an obscure public school in Wales. Attracted to the wealthy mother of one of his pupils, Pennyfeather becomes private tutor to the boy and is eventually engaged to be married to the mother, unaware that the source of her income is a number of high-class brothels in South America. Arrested on the morning of the wedding, Pennyfeather takes the fall to protect his fiance's honour and is sentenced to seven years at a thinly disguised Dartmoor prison. Fortunately, with some outside assistance he is able to fake his own death and escape. In the end he returns to where he started at Scone, his misadventures having so far failed to register with the academic establishment that he can study under his own name.
Decline and Fall is a satire and contains much of the author's characteristic black humour, including digs at the thoughtless power of moneyed aristocracy.