Lucky Jim is a novel by Kingsley Amis, first published in 1954 by Victor Gollancz. It was Amis's first novel and won the 1955 Somerset Maugham Award for fiction. The novel follows the academic and romantic tribulations of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university.
Amis arrived at Dixon's surname from 12 Dixon Drive, Leicester, the address of Philip Larkin from 1948 to 1950, while he was a librarian at the university there.[1] Lucky Jim is dedicated to Larkin, who helped to inspire the main character and contributed significantly to the structure of the novel.[2][3]
Time magazine included Lucky Jim in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005.[4][5]
