David Lodge Books In Order

Publication Order of The Campus Books

Publication Order of Standalone Novels

Publication Order of Short Stories/Novellas

Publication Order of Plays

Publication Order of Collections

Publication Order of Non-Fiction Books

Publication Order of Anthologies

David Lodge is a literature and fiction writer born in London. He is a graduate and Honorary holder of University College London. He was an Emeritus Engliah Literature Professor at Birmingham University from 1960 to 1987 before becoming a full-time writer.

Lodge is a member of the Royal Society of Literature and was a judges chairman for the Booker Prize for fiction in 1989. The author is a playwright and screenwriter who has adapted his work and other television writers.

Changing Places
Changing Places is the first novel in The Campus trilogy. The novel is set in 1969, where Rummidge University, British English Professor Philip Swallow, and Morris, an American English Professor at Euphoria University, exchange jobs. It was a tradition between their two universities to exchange a professor for six months. Both leave their wives and children behind to have eye-opening experiences in the new environment.

Philip is a quiet and faithful man to his wife for the sixteen years in their marriage, where they’ve been blessed with three children. However, he is sure that it would be good if he went away without the family for some time. He has always admired America and has a very romantic view of the place sixteen years ago during his honeymoon.

Philip Swallow was flying from the University of Rummidge situated in English Midlands. He seemed to be a strange choice for the exchange because he was an unassuming underachiever who had never done anything extraordinary and was unpublished. The truth is that he didn’t know that he was chosen over many qualified applicants after his department leader used his influence in the selection.

He didn’t do so out of respect or admiration but because he wanted to promote a younger member to a position higher than Swallow’s, and it would be easier if he did it while Swallow was out of the country.

Morris was a faculty member locally known as Euphoric State at the University of Euphoria. He wasn’t so eager to leave the campus by the Bay to spend six months in the Blue collar Midlands, and he had more than one reason for his reluctance.

Despite him being an English Literature professor and a man with a noted authority on Jane Austen, he never wanted to go to England since he claimed he had more authority on the literature of England. He also enjoyed shocking his students by stating that Jane Austen was sometimes annoying. Why did he a candidate for the exchange program?

Morris’s wife was kicking him out of their home, giving divorce threats, and he never wanted people to know that it was her idea. He succeeded in convincing his wife to delay the divorce if he left the country for six months which in his mind thought would prevent people from knowing what was happening at home.
He also hopes that the break will help cool things down and be given another chance in marriage.

He isn’t trying to prevent the divorce because of his wife, but because he loves Elizabeth and Darcy’s children. He lusts on every lady he sees, and he has cheated on his wife so many times that she has already given up on the marriage. He also has a behavior of getting intimate with his students and the babysitter, and after his first wife divorced him, he lost custody of his daughter and now is afraid that the same will happen with his twins.

The lives of the two professors entwine in a more complicated way. Both of them move opposite sides both psychologically and geographically. With time Philip finds himself changing his ways to become a less stuck-up human being and less sarcastic. Can he keep his vow, or will he go back to his cheating ways?
The two men stumble around in their new environments and later get used to the new culture, climate, English department, and ways of doing things. Swallow is getting overwhelmed with his freedom in Euphoria while he misses his home country nightclubs and adventures. Their wives, on the other part, are learning this new thing known as ‘Women’s Lib.’ Can this change how they treat their husbands? How will the professor deal with it? David Lodge makes spirited fun of all the academic stereotypes.

Small World
In this second book in the trilogy, the author brings the familiar characters from the first novel, Morris Zapp, Philip Swallow, and their wives Desiree and Hilary, respectively. Even though Morris and Desiree are divorced, there is a time when he feels that he needs her so badly.

The author introduces the protagonist, the Irishman Persse McGarrigle, an English professor who’s still a virgin. In one conference held during the spring, he meets a beautiful and intelligent lady whom he becomes obsessed with after getting into a brief conversation and flirting. After the conference ends, she disappears, and he can’t find her, which makes him filled with despair.

Persse enquires from everyone, but she seems mysterious, showing up at each English professor conference even though she isn’t really a professor. No one has information about her address or where to find her, and even when Persse wants to write her a letter, he can’t since he doesn’t know where to send it. This forces him to start a long and complex journey from one conference to the next worldwide, hoping to find her.

When some people kidnap him led by Carlo, and Desiree is asked to pay a ransom of one million dollars, she replies by asking how much they want to keep him. How did he get kidnapped?

They come up with an amusing negotiation, and she’s ready to raise ten thousand since she knows that this is how Morris wants to return to her now that she’s become famous after making huge sales. Additionally, she has got adaptation rights for her bestseller, and she isn’t ready to let the public see her as cruel and indifferent to the death of her ex-husband. There is another way she can save the kidnapped professor.
The humor in the novel is subtle and will have you laughing out loud