Lucky Jim

Published in 1954, this campus comic novel follows Jim Dixon, a junior lecturer in medieval history at a provincial English university. He needs to keep the favour of Professor Welch, whose vague enthusiasm for amateur music and Merrie England threatens Dixon's job, and he becomes entangled with Margaret, a colleague who stages emotional crises, and with Christine, the girlfriend of Welch's painter son Bertrand. Dixon fakes an article, burns bedclothes at a weekend, and finally delivers the public lecture on which his post depends. The plot is a sequence of social humiliations in lodgings, common rooms, and the Welch household. It is a satire of academic manners, not a mystery.

Bound in brown cloth front printed with a picture in black and light blue. Brown slipcase.