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9 absorbing novels with an academic setting

Books by David Lodge on a blue background

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Where to start reading David Lodge

A Memoir: 1976-1991

Writer's Luck

David Lodge’s frank and illuminating memoir about the years where he found great success as a novelist and critic.

A wonderfully candid and insightful account of a writer's life: astute, unpretentious and humane.

One of the greatest storytellers in existence and a master of suspense… [Lodge] combines an analytical, scientific way of looking at life…with a vivid, poetic imagination… a uniquely honest record of a successful English novelist’s life. There is more truth about the literary life in this book than you will find in a thousand doctoral theses, or a million promotional interviews with famous writers. Or most memoirs. It is a true gem

Irresistible… One of the fascinations of the memoir is the variety of critical techniques that are shown… this fleshed-out diary is curiously addictive

An absorbing account… endearing, and…revealing… at no point…has [Lodge] betrayed his roots by giving in to the temptations of literary grandeur… authentic

David Lodge (CBE)’s novels include Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work (shortlisted for the Booker) and, most recently, A Man of Parts. He has also written plays and screenplays, and several books of literary criticism. His works have been translated into more than thirty languages. 
 
He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Birmingham, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

‘A wonderfully candid and insightful account of a writer’s life’ William Boyd 
 
Luck, good or bad, plays an important part in a writer’s career. 
 
 In 1976 Lodge was pursuing a ‘twin-track career’ as novelist and academic but the balancing act was increasingly difficult, and he became a full-time writer just before he published his bestselling novel Nice Work. 
 
Readers of Lodge’s novels will be fascinated by the insights this book gives – not only into his professional career but also more personal experience, such as his growing scepticism of his Catholic religion and the challenges of parenting. Anyone who is interested in learning about the creative process and about the life of a writer will find Writer’s Luck a candid and entertaining guide.

Consciousness and the Novel

A major collection of linked essays on how the great novelists – Dickens, James, Roth, Amis – go about representing human consciousness on the page

The professor, the critic and the novelist work in harmony to provide a valuable tutorial on modern fiction

A fascinating survey of how novels convey our thoughts

The abandonment of civilized talk about literature by the ‘theory’ fraternity would leave us very short if it were not for the likes of Lodge, the quality of whose prose and insights, not least because they both come matured from the casks of his own vocation, is a high treat. Leave consciousness to the neurophysiologists and philosophers, and explore human experience and selfhood with Lodge and the novelists, and enjoy

Lodge is a clear writer, wise about things and a careful reader and in general kind even to people who plainly irritate him

He excels when he writes about books. His wide learning and through understanding of critical trends give confidence and enthusiasm to his work

Lodge’s animating spark is his sedulousness, his ability to marshal the facts, pronounce a judgement and then subtly qualify it

Consciousness and the Novel makes a bright, instructive introduction to David Lodge – as critic and novelist – for anyone who does not know his work

Most other critics would make heavy weather of such topics, but Lodge always scintillates

[Lodge] gives fresh perspectives of fellow writers and an enthralling way to read much of the twentieth-century novel

David Lodge (CBE)’s novels include Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work (shortlisted for the Booker) and, most recently, A Man of Parts. He has also written plays and screenplays, and several books of literary criticism. His works have been translated into more than thirty languages. 
 
He is Emeritus Professor of English Literature at Birmingham, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, and is a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.

'The professor, the critic and the novelist work in harmony to provide a valuable tutorial on modern fiction' Observer 
 
How does the novel represent human consciousness on the page? 
In eleven sparkling essays on some of the great novelists of the last 200 years – from Charles Dickens to Martin Amis, Henry James to Philip Roth – David Lodge pursues this question with characteristic verve and wit. One of the best novelists and critics of his generation, Lodge is the perfect guide to look afresh at the mysterious workings of the creative mind.

Secret Thoughts

A play based on David Lodge's acclaimed novel Thinks...

Masterly... The story of an argumentative, and erotic, campus encounter between a philandering cognitive scientist and a recently bereaved novelist... an impassioned intellectual and emotional duel

On THINKS: "David Lodge yokes together two warhorses, the campus novel and the novel of adultery, and uses them to pull an old debate - the rival claims of science and art - to tell the truth about life

Lodge's wit... like that of Wodehouse, froths around and out of characters

One of the leading comic writers of his generation

Helen Reed, a novelist in her early forties, still grieving for her husband who died suddenly a year before, is a visiting teacher of creative writing at a university where Ralph Messenger, a cognitive scientist with a special interest in Artificial Intelligence and an incorrigible womaniser, is director of a prestigious research institute. 
 
He is an atheist and a materialist; she is a Catholic who has lost her faith but still yearns for the consolations of religion. Ralph is attracted to Helen and she, in spite of her principles, to him. They argue about the nature of human consciousness, and the different ways it is examined in science and literature, as she resists with weakening resolution Ralph's efforts to seduce her. 
 
David Lodge has distilled the story of his acclaimed novel Thinks... to create a witty and absorbing drama about a moral, emotional and intellectual struggle between two exceptional people.

The Man Who Wouldn't Get Up and Other Stories

Shrewd, funny and delightfully entertaining, this is the first collection of short stories from one of Britain's finest novelists and critics

His down-to-earth stories have a nice blend of the worldly and the ingenious.

David Lodge's short stories are as witty and surprising as his novels

Fresh and timely...well-observed collection that one wishes was twice as long

Lodge’s preoccupations in these stories tend to be masculine, though not exclusively. The stories deal with the tumult and mysteries of relationships in a style at once serious and farcical… This collection shows Lodge at his most playfully imaginative.

The first collection of short stories from one of Britain's finest novelists and critics 
 
A nameless man who has fallen out of love with life, refuses to get out of bed, with unexpected consequences. A sociologist recalls how he learned his first and formative lesson about the oppressive power of capitalism selling newspapers and magazines up and down the platforms of Waterloo station. Some years before the era of the Pill and the Permissive Society, four university friends travel to the Mediterranean for their first holiday together, where the climate is sultry and sex is on everyone’s mind. And a strong-willed young woman defies adverse circumstances to pursue the perfect wedding at all costs. 
 
These are some of the characters that populate David Lodge’s shrewd, funny and delightfully entertaining short stories, collected here for the very first time. What prompted their publication in this form is a short story in itself, told by the author in his Foreword. 
 
LONGLISTED FOR THE EDGE HILL SHORT STORY PRIZE 2017

The Picturegoers

The first novel from one of Britain's best loved writers

The Picturegoers' appeal derives as much from the quality of the writing as for its absorption in a bygone way of life

An excellent first novel... He has a wonderful eye for the tawdriness of our commercial world

Welcome to the Palladium, Brickley. Once the grandest music-hall south of the river, now its peeling foyer is home to stale popcorn, a depressed manager, and a cast of disparate picturegoers who touch and shape each other’s destinies. 
 
Amongst them is Mark, the cynical intellectual who seeks sensuality and finds spirituality; Clare, his girlfriend, who loses faith and discovers passion; Father Kipling, the scandalized priest; and Harry, the sexually frustrated Teddy boy. 
 
In his astutely observed first novel, David Lodge ushers in a congregation of characters whose hopes, confusions and foibles play out alongside the celluloid fantasies of the silver screen.

A Memoir: 1935-1975

Quite A Good Time to be Born

A memoir from one of Britain's finest novelists and critics.

What one takes away from this half-memoir is the self-portrait of an extraordinarily good, wrongly modest man; a distinguished scholar, and one of the finest of current novelists

As a piece of reportage from the third quarter of the English 20th century this is a sociologist’s paradise

An outstanding memoir... Lucid and witty

Quite a Good Time to be Born is a record of success, free of boasting or malice. Anyone with some knowledge of academia or the literary world will find it full of interest

To call it quite a good book would definitely be an understatement

A fascinating portrayal of a writer’s development and a perceptive account of the changing society he lived in

This is a must-read for any die-hard fan… I’m looking forward to the sequel already

The book I’d most like to be given for Christmas’ ‘criminally underrated as a writer

A revealing account of a novelist’s growth and of a brilliant mind freeing itself from the fetters of religion and social disadvantage.

[Lodge] captures a period of change when bright but ordinary children enjoyed life-changing opportunities that their parents could only have dreamt of.

Evocative memoir… The exhaustive details of the revolutions in criticism, the novel and Eng Lit are illuminating…and the influential role Lodge has played in their development.

'I drew my first breath on the 28th of January 1935, which was quite a good time for a future writer to be born in England...’ 
 
The only child in a lower-middle-class London family, David Lodge inherited his artistic genes from his musician father and his Catholic faith from his Irish-Belgian mother. Four years old when World War II began, David grew to maturity through decades of great social and cultural change - giving him plenty to write about. 
 
Candid, witty and insightful, Quite a Good Time to be Born illuminates a period of transition in British society, and charts the evolution of a writer whose works have become classics in his own lifetime.

David Lodge

Lodge is the best British novelist never to have won the Man Booker prize

One of the leading writers of his generation

As an account of the period, Varying Degrees of Success is continuously engaging... glimpses of the ambition and energy required to fuel the final stretch of his near 60-year career as the most dependable of novelist-critics.

The new memoir from one of Britain’s best loved writers

In a career spanning six decades, David Lodge has been one of Britain's best-loved and most versatile writers. 
 
 With Varying Degrees of Success he completes a trilogy of memoirs which describe his life from birth in 1935 to the present day, and together form a remarkable autobiography. He describes the highs and lows of being a professional creative writer in several different genres, his extensive travels around the world, and the hope and desire of writers to make a significant and positive impression on their readers and audiences. 
 
Varying Degrees of Success provides the reader with a privileged insight into the working practices and the creative life of a major British novelist. 
 
'Continuously engaging... Glimpses of the ambition and energy required to fuel the final stretch of his near 60-year career as the most dependable of novelist-critics' New Statesman 
 
'Lodge is the best British novelist never to have won the Man Booker prize' The Times

David Lodge

Praise for Varying Degrees of Success

Lodge is the best British novelist never to have won the Man Booker prize

One of the leading writers of his generation

As an account of the period, Varying Degrees of Success is continuously engaging... glimpses of the ambition and energy required to fuel the final stretch of his near 60-year career as the most ...

Lodge is the best British novelist never to have won the Man Booker prize

One of the leading writers of his generation

As an account of the period, Varying Degrees of Success is continuously engaging... glimpses of the ambition and energy required to fuel the final stretch of his near 60-year career as the most ...

Lodge is the best British novelist never to have won the Man Booker prize

One of the leading writers of his generation

As an account of the period, Varying Degrees of Success is continuously engaging... glimpses of the ambition and energy required to fuel the final stretch of his near 60-year career as the most ...

Books by David Lodge

Articles featuring David Lodge

9 absorbing novels with an academic setting

Where to start reading David Lodge

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