A specialist in eighteenth-century literature and satire, Douglas Lane Patey grew up in Corning, New York. After attending Hamilton College he took graduate degrees at the University of Virginia, and since 1979 has taught in the Department of Engilsh Language and LIterature at Smith College (Northampton, MA). He has won fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the Guggenhaim Foundation. He is the author of Probability and Literary Form: Philosophic Theory and Literary Practice in the Augustan Age (CUP, 1984; reprinted 2009), and The Life of Evelyn Waugh: A Critical Biography (Blackwell, 1998; 2nd edition 2001).

At its simplest, this is a republication, as Douglas Patey's suggestive "Introduction" confirms, of Waugh's ninety-two-day trip undertaken on the 2nd of December, 1932, "the most arduous journey of his career: a trek take, often alone, through the back country of British Guiana and into northern Brazil". Suggestive, since although much of the value of this particular edition of a parergon Waugh himself never particularly cared for stems from Patey's contribution rather than the original, Patey's hands are tied by the governing propaedeutics of the Complete Works.

• List of Illustrations Abbreviations Introduction Original frontmatterTHE TEXTAppendix A: Contextual Notes Appendix B: Manuscript Development and Textual Variants Appendix C: Biographical Notes Appendix D: Alec Waugh's Baracuda Hotel Appendix E: Father Cary-Elwes Visits Mr Christie in 1909Acknowledgements Index