Books

London: Victor Gollancz, 1953. First edition of this hilarious satire about college life and high class manners, a classic of postwar English literature. Octavo, original cloth. Near fine in a very good dust jacket. Housed in a custom half morocco clamshell and chemise box. Regarded by many as the finest, and funniest, comic novel of the twentieth century, Lucky Jim remains as trenchant, withering, and eloquently misanthropic as when it first scandalized readers in 1954. This is the story of Jim Dixon, a hapless lecturer in medieval history at a provincial university who knows better than most that “there was no end to the ways in which nice things are nicer than nasty ones.” Kingsley Amis’s scabrous debut leads the reader through a gallery of emphatically English bores, cranks, frauds, and neurotics with whom Dixon must contend in one way or another in order to hold on to his cushy academic perch and win the girl of his fancy.

Kingsley Amis's first novel, 'Lucky Jim', is a comic sensation that paints a brilliant picture of academic life in post-war Britain. Following Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer, Amis illustrates a satirical journey through university pedantry and the inherent absurdities.