Vainglory

'The world is disgracefully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain' The fairly young and entirely alive Mrs Shamefoot wants nothing more than to have a memorial stained-glass window erected in her honour in an English cathedral. From this premise Ronald Firbank extends his witty, eccentric Vainglory, with a crowded cast, a string of parties, and a bottomless sense of the ridiculous. The inimitable Firbank was admired by Auden, Forster and Waugh for his fine comic skill, quick-fire dialogue and descriptive flights of fancy are perfectly captured in Vainglory as well as the other two short novels included here - Inclinations and Caprice. Richard Canning's introduction to this new edition of Firbank's work discusses this brilliant and idiosyncratic writer as a modernist innovator whose experiments with form and dialogue preceded those of Woolf and Joyce, and who would go on to influence writers as diverse as Joe Orton, John Betjeman and Alan Hollinghurst. This edition also includes a chronology and further reading. 'A person who dislikes Firbank's novels may, for all I know, possess some admirable quality but I do not wish ever to see him again' W. H. Auden Edited with an introduction by Richard Canning