The Temple at Thatch is an unpublished novel by the British author Evelyn Waugh, his first adult attempt at full-length fiction. He began writing it in 1924 at the end of his final year as an undergraduate at Hertford College, Oxford, and continued to work on it intermittently in the following 12 months. After his friend Harold Acton commented unfavourably on the novel in June 1925, Waugh burned the manuscript. In a fit of despondency from this and other personal disappointments, he then made a half-hearted suicide bid before returning to his senses. In the absence of a manuscript or printed text, the only information as to the novel's subject comes from Waugh's diary entries and later reminiscences. The story was evidently semi-autobiographical, based around Waugh's Oxford experiences. The protagonist was an undergraduate and the work's main themes were madness and black magic. Some of the novel's ideas were incorporated into Waugh's first commercially published work of fiction, the 1925 short story "The Balance", which includes several references to a country house called "Thatch" and, like the novel, is partly structured as a film script. Acton's severe judgement did not deter Waugh from his intention to be a writer, but it affected his belief that he could succeed as a novelist. For a time he turned his attention away from fiction, but with the gradual recovery of his self-confidence he was able to complete his first novel, Decline and Fall, which was published with great success in 1928.
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_______________________________ Today's selected anniversaries:
1547:
Nine-year-old Edward VI became the first Protestant ruler of England, during whose reign Protestantism was established for the first time in the country with reforms that included the abolition of clerical celibacy and the mass. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_VI_of_England
1887:
The largest-ever snowflakes, measuring 15 in (38 cm) and 8 in (20 cm) thick, were observed in Fort Keough, Montana, US. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_weather_records%23Snow
1896:
Walter Arnold of East Peckham, Kent, England, was the first person ever convicted of exceeding the speed limit. He was travelling 8 miles per hour (13 km/h) when the limit was 2 mph (3.2 km/h), and he was fined one shilling. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/speed_limit
1933:
Choudhary Rahmat Ali published a pamphlet entitled "Now or Never" in which he called for the creation of a Muslim state in northeast India that he termed "Pakstan". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choudhary_Rahmat_Ali
1964:
An unarmed USAF T-39 Sabreliner on a training mission was shot down over Erfurt, East Germany, by a Soviet MiG-19, killing all three aboard. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T-39_Aircraft_Incident
_____________________________ Wiktionary's word of the day:
putsch (n): A coup; an illegal effort to forcibly overthrow the current government http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/putsch
___________________________ Wikiquote quote of the day:
Life on earth is a hand-to-hand mortal combat... between the law of love and the law of hate. --José Martí http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jos%C3%A9_Mart%C3%AD