The Groves of Academe by Mary McCarthy, published in 1952, is often quoted as the earliest example, although in Faculty Towers: The Academic Novel and Its Discontents, Elaine Showalter discusses C. P. Snow's The Masters, of the previous year, and several earlier novels have an academic setting and the same characteristics, such as Thomas Hardy's Jude the Obscure of 1894 to 1896; Willa Cather's The Professor's House of 1925; Régis Messac's Smith Conundrum, first published between 1928 and 1931; and Dorothy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night of 1935 (see below).
Many well-known campus novels, such as Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim and those of David Lodge, are comic or satirical, often counterpointing intellectual pretensions and human weaknesses.
Some, however, attempt a serious treatment of university life; examples include C. P. Snow's The Masters, J. M. Coetzee's Disgrace, Philip Roth's The Human Stain, and Norene Moskalski's Nocturne, Opus 1: Sea Foam.
Campus novels exploit the fictional possibilities created by a closed environment of the university, with idiosyncratic characters inhabiting unambiguous hierarchies.
They may describe the reaction of a fixed socio-cultural perspective (the academic staff) to new social attitudes (the new student intake).