David Lodge (author)
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| David Lodge (author) | |
|---|---|
| Born | January 28, 1935 London, England |
| Occupation | Full-time writer |
| Notable award(s) | Hawthornden Prize 1975 |
David Lodge CBE, (born January 28, 1935 at Brockley London, England) is a British author.
Contents |
[edit] Biography
Lodge was born and grew up in Brockley in south-east London. His first published novel The Picturegoers (1960) draws on his early experiences in 'Brickley', which are also described in his novel Therapy.
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 novels The British Museum Is Falling Down, How Far Can You Go? (published in the U.S. as Souls and Bodies) and Paradise News.
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", a thinly disguised version of Berkeley, California.
Several of his novels — in particular Small World, and Nice Work — have been adapted into television series. Nice Work was filmed at the University of Birmingham.
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: A Tale of Two Campuses — 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 — 1999 (novella - written from original play)
- Thinks ... — 2001
- Author, Author — 2004
- Deaf Sentence — 2008
[edit] Non-fiction
- Language of Fiction — 1966
- The Novelist at the Crossroads — 1971
- The Modes of Modern Writing — 1977
- Working with Structualism — 1981
- Write On — 1986
- After Bakhtin — 1990
- The Art of Fiction (book) — 1992
- Modern Criticism and Theory: A Reader — 1992
- The Practice of Writing — 1997
- Consciousness and the Novel — 2003
- The Year of Henry James: The Story of a Novel — 2006
[edit] Theatre
- The Writing Game — 1990
- Home Truths — 1999
[edit] Adaptations for television
- Small World — 1988
- Nice Work — 1989
- Martin Chuzzlewit — 1994
- The Writing Game — 1995
[edit] External links
