Kingsley Amis’s

is widely acknowledged as the quintessential campus novel of the twentieth century. As a central figure in the “Angry Young Man” movement during the 1950s, Amis utilizes comedy in the novel as a means for delivering his satiric attacks on the university community. Amis’s narrative is especially critical of those privileged individuals who endeavor to maintain the academic status quo in their favor through the exploitation of junior colleagues, and, ultimately, through the threat of expulsion from the seemingly sacred groves of campus life.

was Amis’s first novel, and it received the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction.

Lucky Jim finds its origins in Amis’s 1946 visit to the Senior Common Room at Leicester University, although it also

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Citation: Womack, Kenneth. "Lucky Jim". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 10 May 2006 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=3806, accessed 27 November 2024.]