[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"doc-detail-143480-en":3,"doc-seo-143480-105":30,"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":91},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",{"doc_id":7,"user_id":8,"nickname":9,"user_avatar":10,"doc_module":4,"category_id":11,"category_name":12,"doc_title":13,"doc_description":14,"doc_content":15,"file_id":16,"file_url":17,"file_type":18,"file_size":19,"view_count":11,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":20,"is_downloadable":20,"audit_status":20,"page_count":21,"language":22,"language_code":23,"site_id":24,"html_lang":23,"table_of_contents":25,"faqs":26,"seo_title":27,"seo_description":14,"update_tm":28,"read_time":29},143480,2336464648322,"Aria","https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/2200025388227c56fec?_k=1778556882303663488",2,"Literature","Lucky Jim - Introduction","Lucky Jim is presented as a book about two young men—irritable rather than “angry”—shaped by Oxford and World War II and confronted with an England in terminal decline. The introduction situates Kingsley Amis’s early career and the difficulties he faced before the novel’s breakthrough, including unpublished work and professional setbacks. It also traces the friendship and contrasting lives of Amis and Philip Larkin, highlighting their professional paths and complicated relationships, to frame the novel’s tone and themes.","KINGSLEY AMIS (1922–1995) was a popular and prolific British novelist, poet, and critic, widely regarded as one of the greatest satirical writers of the twentieth century. Born in suburban South London, the only child of a clerk in the office of the mustard-maker Colman’s, he went to the City of London School on the Thames before winning an English scholarship to St. John’s College, Oxford, where he began a lifelong friendship with fellow student Philip Larkin. Following service in the British Army’s Royal Corps of Signals during World War II, he completed his degree and joined the faculty at the University College of Swansea in Wales. Lucky Jim, his first novel, appeared in 1954 to great acclaim and won a Somerset Maugham Award. Amis spent a year as a visiting fellow in the creative writing department of Princeton University and in 1961 became a fellow at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, but resigned the position two years later, lamenting the incompatibility of writing and teaching (“I found myself fit for nothing much more exacting than playing the gramophone after three supervisions a day”). Ultimately he published twenty-four novels, including science fiction and a James Bond sequel; more than a dozen collections of poetry, short stories, and literary criticism; restaurant reviews and three books about drinking; political pamphlets and a memoir; and more. Amis received the Booker Prize for his novel The Old Devils in 1986 and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 1990. He had three children, among them the novelist Martin Amis, with his first wife, Hilary Anne Bardwell, from whom he was divorced in 1965. After his second, eighteen-year marriage to the novelist Elizabeth Jane Howard ended in 1983, he lived in a London house with his first wife and her third husband.  \nKEITH GESSEN is a founding editor of n+1 and the author of All the Sad Young Literary Men. Among his translations from the Russian are Voices from Chernobyl by Svetlana Alexievich and, with Anna Summers, There Once Lived a Woman Who Tried to Kill Her Neighbor ’s Baby: Scary Fairy Tales by Ludmilla Petrushevskaya.  \nLUCKY JIM  \nKINGSLEY AMIS  \nIntroduction by  \nKEITH GESSEN  \nNEW YORK REVIEW BOOKS  \nNew York  \nContents  \nBiographical Notes  \nTitle Page  \nIntroduction  \nLucky Jim  \nCopyright and More Information  \nIntroduction  \nLucky Jim is a young man’s book, in fact the book of two young men. They weren’t exactly angry young men, but they were extremely irritable. College friends with similar backgrounds, they had graduated from both Oxford and the Second World War to find themselves in an England that was in terminal decline. It was bankrupt. It was losing the overseas possessions that had once been its pride, and the people in charge were snobs and incompetents. Worst of all, no one seemed to appreciate the young men’s genius: neither the women they met nor the publishers to whom they sent their works.  \nWhen Kingsley Amis began writing Lucky Jim in early 1951, he was twenty-eight years old and an assistant lecturer at a provincial university in Wales. He had written a novel that no one wanted to publish; a book of poems that had been published very badly; a monograph on Graham Greene, commissioned by a shadowy Argentinean outfit, which was never printed and for which Amis was never paid; and a postgraduate thesis, produced in the hope of improving his standing at his university, that had been flunked by his committee at Oxford. Over a year later, still working on Lucky Jim as he turned thirty, Amis wrote his closest friend an exasperated letter.  \nWhat am I doing here? Or anywhere, for that matter. If only someone would take me up, or even show a bit of interest. If only someone would publish some books of mine, I could write some. Still a lecturer at 45 CHRIST Senior Lecturer at Durham at 45 CHRIST   You know the sort of thing that’s going to happen to me? With my teeth even worse than they are (I have had gingivitis for some time) dressing in camel-hair w","cbCaiiv24Ce2h5qn","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaiiv24Ce2h5qn","pdf",995051,1,245,"English","en",105,"# Introduction\n## Lucky Jim as a story of two young men\n## Kingsley Amis’s early writing years\n## The friendship with Philip Larkin","[{\"question\":\"How does the introduction describe Lucky Jim’s main mood and protagonists?\",\"answer\":\"It frames the novel as a young men’s book focused on two extremely irritable friends rather than openly “angry” youths. They face an England portrayed as bankrupt, incompetent, and dismissive of their talents.\"},{\"question\":\"What background does the introduction give about Kingsley Amis when he began writing Lucky Jim?\",\"answer\":\"It places Amis at age twenty-eight as an assistant lecturer in Wales, with a prior history of poorly received or unpublished work and professional frustrations. He continues drafting Lucky Jim while turning thirty.\"},{\"question\":\"How is Philip Larkin connected to the story behind Lucky Jim?\",\"answer\":\"The introduction emphasizes the close friendship between Amis and Larkin formed at Oxford in 1941. It contrasts Amis’s and Larkin’s professional stability with Larkin’s difficulties with women and his long, complicated affair history.\"}]","Lucky Jim - Introduction | PDF",1787695355,377,{"code":4,"msg":31,"data":32},"ok",{"site_id":24,"language":23,"slug":33,"title":13,"keywords":34,"description":14,"schema_data":35,"social_meta":86,"head_meta":88,"extra_data":90,"updated_unix":28},"lucky-jim-introduction","",{"@graph":36,"@context":85},[37,53,68],{"@type":38,"itemListElement":39},"BreadcrumbList",[40,44,47,50],{"item":41,"name":42,"@type":43,"position":20},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":45,"name":46,"@type":43,"position":11},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/","Document",{"item":48,"name":12,"@type":43,"position":49},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/literature/",3,{"item":51,"name":13,"@type":43,"position":52},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/lucky-jim-introduction/143480/",4,{"url":51,"name":13,"@type":54,"author":55,"headline":13,"publisher":57,"fileFormat":60,"inLanguage":23,"description":14,"dateModified":61,"datePublished":62,"encodingFormat":60,"isAccessibleForFree":63,"interactionStatistic":64},"DigitalDocument",{"name":9,"@type":56},"Person",{"url":41,"name":58,"@type":59},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-04","2026-08-25",true,{"@type":65,"interactionType":66,"userInteractionCount":11},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":67},"ViewAction",{"@type":69,"mainEntity":70},"FAQPage",[71,77,81],{"name":72,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":74},"How does the introduction describe Lucky Jim’s main mood and protagonists?","Question",{"text":75,"@type":76},"It frames the novel as a young men’s book focused on two extremely irritable friends rather than openly “angry” youths. They face an England portrayed as bankrupt, incompetent, and dismissive of their talents.","Answer",{"name":78,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":79},"What background does the introduction give about Kingsley Amis when he began writing Lucky Jim?",{"text":80,"@type":76},"It places Amis at age twenty-eight as an assistant lecturer in Wales, with a prior history of poorly received or unpublished work and professional frustrations. He continues drafting Lucky Jim while turning thirty.",{"name":82,"@type":73,"acceptedAnswer":83},"How is Philip Larkin connected to the story behind Lucky Jim?",{"text":84,"@type":76},"The introduction emphasizes the close friendship between Amis and Larkin formed at Oxford in 1941. 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