Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh: Robbery Under Law: Volume 24

This volume is part of the Complete Works of Evelyn Waugh critical edition, which brings together all Waugh’s published and previously unpublished writings for the first time with comprehensive introductions and annotation, and a full account of each text’s manuscript development and textual variants. The edition’s General Editor is Alexander Waugh, Evelyn Waugh’s grandson and editor of the twelve-volume Personal Writings sequence.

This is the first fully annotated critical edition of Waugh’s book on Mexico, Robbery Under Law: The Mexican Object-Lesson (1939), based on three months’ research by Waugh in the country in 1938 and rarely included in later reprints of Waugh’s travel writings. Waugh insisted in its opening words: ‘This is a political book’; it traced the expropriation of British and American oil interests in Mexico by its repressive Marxist government. It described the current political and social inequities suffered by both its Mexican citizens and foreign companies trading there and also provided a powerful account of the history of Catholic persecution in the country. Its narratives offered an implicit but potent warning about the barbarity of totalitarian regimes as war in Western Europe grew increasingly likely.