Traces the conception, writing and publication of the author's book. This work offers psychological and literary insights which suggests nothing less than a short story by the Great Master, Henry James, himself.

The Language of Fiction was the first book of criticism by the novelist David Lodge. In it he established a fresh approach to the appreciation of literature that focuses the reader's attention on the significance of language. This edition has a new foreword from David Lodge and includes in its entirety the comprehensive afterword from the 1984 edition.

The British Museum is Falling Down is a brilliant comic satire of academia, religion and human entanglements. First published in 1965, it tells the story of hapless, scooter-riding young research student Adam Appleby, who is trying to write his thesis but is constantly distracted -- not least by the fact that, as Catholics in the late 1960s, he and his wife must rely on 'Vatican roulette' to avoid a fourth child.

Philip Swallow, Morris Zapp, Persse McGarrigle and the lovely Angelica are the jet-propelled academics who are on the move, in the air and on the make in David Lodge s satirical Small World. It is a world of glamorous travel and high excitement, where stuffy lecture rooms are swapped for lush corners of the globe, and romance is in the air."

'The Campus Trilogy' contains three brilliantly comic novels revolving around the University of Rummidge and the eventful lives of its role-swapping academics.

When it isn't prison, it's hell.
Or at least that's the heartfelt belief of conscripts Jonathan Browne and Mike 'Ginger' Brady. For this is the British Army in the days of National Service, a grimy deposit of post-war gloom. An endless round of kit layout, square-bashing, shepherd's pie 'made with real shepherds' and drills is relieved only by the occasional lecture on firearms or V.D. The reckless, impulsive Mike and the more pragmatic Jonathan adopt radically different attitudes to survive this two-year confiscation of their freedom, with dramatic consequences.

Polly, Dennis, Angela, Adrian and the rest are bound to lose their spiritual innocence as well as their virginities on the journey between university in the 1950s and the marriages, families, careers and deaths that follow. On the one hand there's sex and then the pill, on the other there is the traditional Catholic Church. In this razor-sharp novel, David Lodge exposes the pressures that assailed Catholics everywhere within a more permissive society, and voices their eternal question: how far can you go?

Everything changes when Timothy s glamorous older sister, Kath, invites him to spend the summer at Heidelberg. Kath, who left home long ago to work for the American army, introduces her sixteen-year-old brother to a lifestyle that is deliriously fast, furious and extravagant. Dazzled by the indulgent habits of the American forces, but at the same time sensitive to the broken spirits of the German community beneath this sparking surface, Timothy will find that his summer holiday is in more ways than one an unforgettable rite of passage."

When Vic Wilcox (MD of Pringle's engineering works) meets English lecturer Dr. Robyn Penrose, sparks fly as their lifestyles and ideologies collide head on. What, after all, are they supposed to learn from each other? But in time both parties make some surprising discoveries about each other's worlds -- and about themselves.

A successful sitcom writer with plenty of money, a stable marriage, a platonic mistress and a flash car, Laurence Tubby Passmore has more reason than most to be happy. Yet neither physiotherapy nor aromatherapy, cognitive behaviour therapy or acupuncture can cure his puzzling knee pain or his equally inexplicable mid-life angst.
As Tubby s life fragments under the weight of his self-obsession, he embarks on a picaresque quest for his lost contentment."