David Lodge (author)

David John Lodge (28 January 1935 – 1 January 2025) was an English novelist and critic. He was a literature professor at the University of Birmingham until 1987, and some of his novels satirise academic life, notably the "Campus Trilogy" – Changing Places: A Tale of Two Campuses (1975), Small World: An Academic Romance (1984) and Nice Work (1988). The latter two were shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Another theme is Roman Catholicism, beginning from his first published novel The Picturegoers (1960). Lodge also wrote television screenplays and three stage plays. After retiring, he continued to publish literary criticism. His edition of Twentieth Century Literary Criticism (1972) includes essays on 20th-century writers such as T. S. Eliot. In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as "Point of View" (Henry James), "The Stream of Consciousness" (Virginia Woolf) and "Interior Monologue" (James Joyce), beginning with "Beginning" and ending with "Ending". Lodge's works were widely recognised with literary, and other national and international honours. He was appointed Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1997 and became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) the following year.