David Lodge (author)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
David Lodge (born January 28, 1935 at London, England) is a British author.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Lodge studied at University College London, obtaining a BA in 1955 and an MA in 1959. He went on to obtain a PhD at the University of Birmingham, and taught English there from 1960 until 1987, when he retired to become a full-time writer. He retains the title of Honorary Professor of Modern English Literature at the University and continues to live in Birmingham. His papers are housed at the University of Birmingham Special Collections.
Lodge often satirises academia in general, and the humanities in particular, in his novels. As Lodge was brought up as a Catholic — though he later described himself as an "agnostic Catholic" — many of his characters are Roman Catholic and their Catholicism is also one of his themes, especially in his novel How Far Can You Go? (published in the U.S. as Souls and Bodies).
His fictional locales include the town of "Rummidge", modelled after Birmingham, and the equally imaginary US state of "Euphoria", situated between the states of "North California" and "South California". Euphoria's State University is located in the city of "Plotinus", right across the Bay from "Esseph", and is a thinly disguised version of Berkeley, California.
Several of his novels — in particular, Changing Places, Small World, and Nice Work — have been adapted into television series.
In the 1998 New Years Honours list David Lodge was appointed CBE for his services to Literature.
[edit] Awards and recognition
- Winner of the Hawthornden Prize and the Yorkshire Post Fiction Prize for Changing Places
- Whitbread Book of the Year (1980) for How Far Can You Go?
- Shortlisted for the Booker Prize (1984) for Small World
- Shortlisted for the Booker Prize (1988) for Nice Work
- Winner of the Sunday Express Book of the Year Award (1988) for Nice Work
- Regional winner and finalist for the Commonwealth Writers Prize (1996) for Therapy
- Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature
- The television serialization of Nice Work (which he adapted himself) won the Royal Television Society's Award for best Drama serial in the year 1989 and a Silver Nymph at the International Television Festival (Monte Carlo; 1990).
[edit] Bibliography
[edit] Fiction
- The Picturegoers — 1960
- Ginger You're Barmy — 1962
- The British Museum Is Falling Down — 1965
- Out of the Shelter — 1970
- Changing Places — 1975
- How Far Can You Go? (US edition: Souls and Bodies) — 1980
- Small World: An Academic Romance — 1984
- Nice Work — 1988
- Paradise News — 1991
- Therapy — 1995
- The Man Who Wouldn't Get Up: And Other Stories — 1998
- Home Truths: A Novella — 1999
- Thinks ... — 2001
- Author, Author — 2004
[edit] Non-fiction
- Language of Fiction — 1966
- The Novelist at the Crossroads — 1971
- The Modes of Modern Writing — 1977
- Write On — 1986
- The Art of Fiction — 1992
- Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader — 1992
- The Practice of Writing — 1997
- Consciousness and the Novel — 2003
- The Year of Henry James — 2006
