Showrooms

Lucky Jim. by Kingsley AMIS

Creator: Kingsley AMIS
Offered by: Shapero Gallery

Description
AMIS, Kingsley.

Lucky Jim.
Stock Code 108268
London, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1953

Current price$12,688.00
Amis' first novel - signed. Amis' first and best-loved novel, rare signed and in its jacket.

An attractive example of Amis' first novel; it features the titular Jim Dixon, an inferior academic in a second-rate university. Lucky Jim is remarkable for its relentless skewering of artifice and pretension; it also contains some of the finest comic set pieces in the language. One of the more brilliant concerns a weekend at the home of a ghastly senior professor. After an afternoon of enforced madrigals, Jim becomes so horribly drunk that he inadvertently destroys his host's spare room.

Jim is more appealing than some of Amis's later heroes; his hatreds – expressed viscerally through a vast repertoire of grotesque faces – are infectious, while his increasingly elaborate attempts to dig himself out of trouble rarely have the desired effect. The result is a novel in the grand tradition of English satire.

First edition, signed by the author and dated February 1954 on upper endpaper; 8vo; publisher's boards, very slight fading to spine, dust-jacket, light browning to spine, light toning to head of rear panel, spine ends and corners a little chipped, short nick with creasing to lower corner of upper panel, some very light surface soiling but a sharp and very good copy overall.

More Information

Documentation:	Signed
Period:	1950-1979
Condition:	Good.
Styles / Movements:	Modern
Dealer Reference #:	108268
Incollect Reference #:	746219

Message from Seller:

Based in the heart of Mayfair in London, we specialise in prints and original works on paper across a broad range of subjects, from antique prints to modern pochoir plates, as well as photographs from vintage photography to modern art photography.