SOURCE: “Waugh Reshapes ‘Period Piece,’” in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 21, No. 1, Winter, 1984, pp. 65–8.

In the following essay, Davis argues that a comparison of the original typescript and the final version of Waugh's frame story “Period Piece” reveals that his revisions, extended the story and added depth and resonance to it.

Evelyn Waugh's story “Period Piece” is one of his most complex in narrative method—it uses a frame tale, a narratee, and a literary and social context in which the most cynical narrative and social monstrosities are accepted as the norm—and one of his most interesting thematically, for it anticipates by a quarter of a century the resolution of the dynastic plot of Sword of Honour. Furthermore, it is the only Waugh short story for which a manuscript or typescript has been discovered, and a comparison of carbon typescript and printed versions shows how carefully Waugh...