Lucky Jim

Amis, Kingsley. Lucky Jim. New York, Viking Press, 1958. 12.5 x 19.5cm. 256 pages. Original softcover. Good condition with some signs of external wear, including foxing and discolouration to jacket and some paper loss to spine. Text itself in very good condition. From the library of swiss – american – irish poet Chuck Kruger. [Compass Books, No. C35]. Kingsley Amis’s witty campus novel, Lucky Jim is a comedy that skewers the hypocrisies and vanities of 1950s academic life. Jim Dixon has accidentally fallen into a job at one of Britain’s new red brick universities. A moderately successful future in the History Department beckons – as long as Jim can stave off the unwelcome advances of fellow lecturer Margaret, survive a madrigal-singing weekend at Professor Welch’s, deliver a lecture on ‘Merrie England’ and resist Christine, the hopelessly desirable girlfriend of Welch’s awful son Bertrand. Inspired by Amis’s friend, the poet Philip Larkin, Jim Dixon is a timeless comic character, adrift in a hopelessly gauche and pretentious world. [Penguin Books]