A Blue Plaque for David Lodge the author who taught English at the University of Birmingham between 1960 and 1987 located outside the entrance to the Faculty of Arts building.
David Lodge's Blue Plaque is one of three Blue Plaques to the right-hand side of the main entrance to the building.
The Plaque carries the following text:
'UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM
David Lodge
author of
satirical "campus novels"
taught English
1960-1987'
David Lodge, in full David John Lodge, (born January 28, 1935, in Brockley in south-east London, England), English novelist, literary critic, playwright, and editor know chiefly for his satiric novels about academic life [loosely based on the University of Birmingham, where he taught English between 1960 and 1987].
He was educated at University College, London (B.A., 1955: M.A., 1959), and the University of Birmingham (Ph. D., 1967).
His early novels, known mostly in England, included the following:
The Picturegoers (1960) about a group of Roman Catholics living in London;
Ginger, You’re Barmy (1962) his novelistic response to his army service in the mid-19550's;
The British Museum is Falling Down (1965), which uses stream-of-consciousness technique; and
Out of the Shelter (1970), an autobiographical coming-of-age novel.
A little late he wrote ‘How Far Can You Go?’ (1980; also published as Souls & Bodies) was well received in both the United States and Britain which takes a satirical look at a group of contemporary English Catholics.
David is a Roman Catholic and brought a personal perspective to both The Picturegoers and How Far Can You Go?
David’s satirical ‘Campus Novels” mentioned on his Blue Plaque outside the Faculty of Arts Building include the following:
A Tale of Two Campuses (1975);
Small World: An Academic Romance (1984); and
Nice Work (1988)
The latter two were short-listed for the Booker Prize.
His later novels include:
Paradise News (1991);
Therapy (1995); and
Thinks...(2001);
Deaf Sentence (2008)
whilst
Author, Author (2004); and
A Man of Parts (2011)
are based on the lives of the writers Henry James and H. G. Wells respectively.
‘In addition to writing fiction, Lodge coauthored the plays Between These Four Walls (produced 1963) and Slap in the Middle (produced 1965). His works of literary theory included Language of Fiction (1966), The Novelist at the Crossroads, and Other Essays on Fiction and Criticism (1971; rev. ed. 1984), Working with Structuralism: Essays and Reviews on Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Literature (1981), Write On: Occasional Essays (1986), and After Bakhtin: Essays in Fiction and Criticism (1990). The Art of Fiction (1992) reprints essays from Lodge’s columns written for The Washington Post and the London Independent, and The Practice of Writing (1996) contains essays, lectures, reviews, and a diary. The essay collection Lives in Writing was published in 2014.
Lodge was the recipient of numerous honours. He was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in 1997 and a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1998. His memoirs are Quite a Good Time to Be Born (2015), which recounts his life from 1935 to 1975, and Writer’s Luck (2018), set in 1976–91.’ (
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