CHAPTER 1: James meets Charles- An examination of the novels Lucky Jim and The Rachel Papers If you are attempting to study a novelist’s work from a critical perspective, it is informative to start at the beginning of their career with their first efforts, for it is in these early periods that their writing style and form are truly fashioned. This may not be true of every author; for example Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has been her seminal and only piece of fiction since 1965, the rest of her work has focused on essays and academic contribution. However, with the Amis dynasty, both Kingsley and Martin’s first books were incredibly important in shaping the writers they were to become and, if we examine them side by side, demonstrate some telling signs of a young man who was determined not to become Son of Lucky Jim” but not yet “The ready to deprive himself of some of the tried and tested methods his father had ridden to success. Kingsley published Lucky Jim in 1954 after three years of working on it in close collusion with Phillip Larkin. It won the Somerset Maugham Award for first novels in 1955, and has, amongst some of his critics, been considered his seminal work of fiction. The plot revolves around Jim Dixon, a lecturer of medieval history at a
CHAPTER 1: James meets Charles- An examination of the novels Lucky Jim and The Rachel Papers If you are attempting to study a novelist’s work from a critical perspective, it is informative to start at the beginning of their career with their first efforts, for it is in these early periods that their writing style and form are truly fashioned. This may not be true of every author; for example Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has been her seminal and only piece of fiction since 1965, the rest of her work has focused on essays and academic contribution. However, with the Amis dynasty, both Kingsley and Martin’s first books were incredibly important in shaping the writers they were to become and, if we examine them side by side, demonstrate some telling signs of a young man who was determined not to become “The Son of Lucky Jim” but not yet ready to deprive himself of some of the tried and tested methods his father had ridden to success. Kingsley published Lucky Jim in 1954 after three years of working on it in close collusion with Phillip Larkin. It won the Somerset Maugham Award for first novels in 1955, and has, amongst some of his critics, been considered his seminal work of fiction. The plot revolves around Jim Dixon, a lecturer of medieval history at a
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