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In 1962 "a revised edition" of Decline and Fall was published in Britain. In a preface written especially for this volume, Waugh noted that the novel had originally been rejected by Duckworth because of "indelicacy." He further recorded that the eventual publishers, Chapman and Hall, demanded several changes in the manuscript for reasons of propriety and literary improvement. Waugh agreed to the recommended changes which were suggested by editor Ralph Straus of Chapman and Hall. In the 1962 edition Waugh has restored the original text before it was altered by Straus; he does not insist that this text be taken as final but presents it as a*gesture of "turning back the clock. "
To assuage further the doubts which the novel had aroused, Waugh prefixed the following ir Author's Note" to the 1928 edition:
I hope that my publishers are wrong when they say that. this is a shocking novelette. I did not mean it to be when I wrote it, and I do not believe that anyone with a sense of humour will find it so. Still less is it a book with a purpose. I hope that somewhere a school like Llanabba may exist, and a staff like Dr. Fagarrs, but it has never been my good fortune to come across them. In fact, I have never met anyone at all like any of the characters, nor have I yet been sent to prison. I apologise heartily to any one who sees himself in this tarnished little mirror; everything is drawn, without malice, from the vaguest of imaginations. Please bear in mind throughout that IT IS MEANT TO BE FUNNY
This rather surprising commentary, which has never appeared in any of the American editions of the bock, is indicative of the shock and dismay which the novel obviously called forth in more than ore...