David Lodge

David Lodge (born January 28, 1935, London, England—died January 1, 2025, Birmingham, England) was an English novelist, literary critic, playwright, and editor known chiefly for his satiric novels about academic life, especially the Campus trilogy: Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984), and Nice Work (1988). Read more

Lodge was educated at University College, London (B.A., 1955; M.A., 1959), and at the University of Birmingham (Ph.D., 1967). His early novels, known mostly in England, included The Picturegoers (1960), about a group of Roman Catholics living in London; Ginger, You’re Barmy (1962), Lodge’s novelistic response to his army service in the mid-1950s; The British Museum Is Falling Down (1965), which uses stream-of-consciousness technique; and Out of the Shelter (1970), an autobiographical coming-of-age novel. How Far Can You Go? (1980; also published as Souls & Bodies) was well received in both the United States and Britain and takes a satiric look at a group of contemporary English Catholics.

Several of Lodge’s novels satirize academic life and share the same setting and recurring characters; these include Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984), and Nice Work (1988). The latter two were short-listed for the Booker Prize. Among his later novels were Paradise News (1991), Therapy (1995), Thinks… (2001), and Deaf Sentence (2008).