It is often said that women's magazines have kept the short story alive, and Good Housekeeping can certainly claim much of the credit, having regularly published short fiction by some of the greatest living writers from the 1920s to the present day.David Lodge is widely regarded as one of the best writers of his generation. His many novels - written over a period of fifty years - are masterful satires, clever, satisfying and often hilarious, with memorable characters who live on lo...

In a career spanning six decades, David Lodge has been one of Britain's best-loved and most versatile writers.With Varying Degrees of Success he completes a trilogy of memoirs which describe his life from birth in 1935 to the present day, and together form a remarkable autobiography. He describes the highs and lows of being a professional creative writer in several different genres, his extensive travels around the world, and the hope and desire of writers...

'I drew my first breath on the 28th of January 1935, which was quite a good time for a future writer to be born in England...’The only child in a lower-middle-class London family, David Lodge inherited his artistic genes from his musician father and his Catholic faith from his Irish-Belgian mother. Four years old when World War II began, David grew to maturity through decades of great social and cultural change - giving him plenty to write about.Candid, wit...

When the university merged his Department of Linguistics with English, Professor Desmond Bates took early retirement, but he is not enjoying it. He misses the purposeful routine of the academic year, and has lost his appetite for research.His wife Winifred's late-flowering career goes from strength to strength, reducing his role to that of escort and househusband, while the rejuvenation of her appearance makes him uneasily conscious of the age gap between them. The monotony of his ...

"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 Modes of Modern Writing tackles some of the fundamental questions we all encounter when studying or reading literature, such as: what is literature? What is realism? What is relationship between form and content? And what dictates the shifts in literary fashions and tastes? In answering these questions, the book examines texts by a wide range of modern novelists and poets, including James Joyce, T.S.Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Virginia Woolf, Samuel Beckett and Phi...

This third edition of Modern Criticism and Theory represents a major expansion on its previous incarnations with some twenty five new pieces or essays included. This expansion has two principal purposes. Firstly, in keeping with the collection’s aim to reflect contemporary preoccupations, the reader has expanded forward to include such newly emergent considerations as ecocriticism and post-theory.Secondly, with the aim of presenting as broad an account of modern t...

**'A brilliantly and preposterously funny book' Guardian'A flawless comic novel ... I loved it then, as I do now. It has always made me laugh out loud' Helen Dunmore, The Times**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 Pro...

A collection of essays on writers and writing by the Booker-shortlisted novelist and critic.Writing about real lives takes various forms, which overlap and may be combined with each other: biography, autobiography, biographical criticism, biographical fiction, memoir, confession, diary.In these thoughtful and enlightening essays David Lodge considers some particularly interesting examples of life-writing, and contributes several of his own. The subjects inc...

‘A wonderfully candid and insightful account of a writer’s life’ William BoydLuck, good or bad, plays an important part in a writer’s career.In 1976 Lodge was pursuing a ‘twin-track career’ as novelist and academic but the balancing act was increasingly difficult, and he became a full-time writer just before he published his bestselling novel Nice Work.Readers of Lodge’s novels will be fascinated by the insights this book gives – not only i...

Ralph Messenger is a man who knows what he wants and generally gets it. Approaching his fiftieth birthday, he has good reason to feel pleased with himself. As Director of the prestigious Holt Belling Centre for Cognitive Science at the University of Gloucester he is much in demand as a pundit on developments in artificial intelligence and the study of human consciousness - 'the last frontier of scientific enquiry'. He enjoys an affluent life style subsidised by the wealth of his American w...

The first collection of short stories from one of Britain's finest novelists and criticsA nameless man who has fallen out of love with life, refuses to get out of bed, with unexpected consequences. A sociologist recalls how he learned his first and formative lesson about the oppressive power of capitalism selling newspapers and magazines up and down the platforms of Waterloo station. Some years before the era of the Pill and the Permissive Society, four university ...