In 1992, he published The Art of Fiction, a collection of essays on literary techniques with illustrative examples from great authors, such as "Point of View" (Henry James), "The Stream of Consciousness" (Virginia Woolf) and "Interior Monologue" (James Joyce), beginning with "Beginning" and ending with "Ending".

After graduating from university, Lodge spent two years in the Royal Armoured Corps on national service, which provided a basis for his novel Ginger You're Barmy.

He then returned to London University, earning a Master of Arts in 1959 for a thesis on "The Catholic Novel from the Oxford Movement to the Present Day".

[4][7] In 1963, Lodge collaborated with Bradbury and another student, James Duckett, on a satirical revue for the Birmingham Repertory Theatre entitled Between These Four Walls, performed in the autumn of 1963.

The family first lived in Providence, Rhode Island, where David Lodge followed the American literature course at Brown University.

[10] In 1966, Lodge published his first book of academic criticism, Language of Fiction, and in 1967 defended his doctoral thesis for a PhD in English awarded in 1967 by Birmingham University.

From 1967 to 1987, Lodge continued his academic career at the University of Birmingham, becoming Professor of English Literature in 1976, while writing several more novels and essays.

The Guardian review of the 2011 reissue of Ginger You're Barmy, called the novel "an impressively humane and feelingly political indictment of a tawdry postwar compromise" and "a moving glimpse of a world on the cusp of change".

(1980; published in the US as Souls and Bodies), examine the difficulties faced by orthodox Catholics due to the prohibition of artificial contraception.

Other novels where Catholicism plays an important part include Small World (in the character of Persse), Paradise News (1991) and Therapy (1995).

He reminisces about his adolescent courtship with his first girlfriend at a Catholic youth club and seeks her out while she is on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.

The Campus Trilogy (Changing Places, Small World and Nice Work) are set at a fictional English Midland university of "Rummidge", modelled on Birmingham.

(The name "Rummidge" appears to be derived from Brummagem, the local nickname for Birmingham, by removing the first and last letters and altering the spelling.)

Lodge has called the plot of the novel "a narrative transformation of the thematic material and the socio-cultural similarities and differences I had perceived between Birmingham and Berkeley," during his visiting professorship.

[25] Lodge's major influences include English Catholic novelists (the subject of his MA dissertation), notably Graham Greene.

Comedy, it seemed, offered a way of reconciling a contradiction, of which I had long been aware, between my critical admiration for the great modernist writers, and my creative practice, formed by the neo-realist, anti-modernist writing of the 1950s.

The British Museum Is Falling Down is influenced by Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and Ulysses by James Joyce in that all of the action takes place in one day.

Lodge says of the novel's genesis, "It gradually grew on me that there was an analogy between my story and the Arthurian story, particularly the Grail quest in which a group of knights wander around the world, having adventures, pursuing ladies, love, and glory, jousting with each other, meeting rather coincidentally or unexpectedly, facing constant challenges and crises, and so on....

Sometimes they take the opportunity to indulge in amorous intrigue, or to joust with each other in debate, pursuing glory in the sense of wanting to be at the top of their profession.

[30][31] His books are routinely translated into other languages, including Czech, Estonian, German, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish and Turkish.

[32][33][34][35] In The Art of Fiction (1992), Lodge studied, through examination of extracts from novels, various stylistic devices (repetition, variation in levels of language, etc.)

[14] Lodge wrote three plays: The Writing Game, Home Truths (which he later turned into a novella), and Secret Thoughts (based on his novel Thinks...).

[14] In his autobiography Quite a Good Time To Be Born: a Memoir, 1935–75 (2015),[37] Lodge notes that The Old Rep was one of his favourite theatres, with a long distinguished history and the likes of Laurence Olivier, Edith Evans, Ralph Richardson, Albert Finney and Derek Jacobi performing there.

According to Lodge, the play "originated in the experience of teaching such a course myself – not because its plot bears any resemblance to what happened on that course, but because it struck me that the bare situation possessed the classic dramatic unities of time, place and action.

The story mainly focuses on Adrian Ludlow, a semi-retired writer interviewed by Fanny Tarrant, a journalist famous for sarcastic portrayals.

Lodge adapted his novel Thinks ... as a two-character play, Secret Thoughts, which opened at the Octagon Theatre, Bolton on 12 May 2011.

"[46] Secret Thoughts won Best New Play at the Manchester Theatre Awards, hailed as a "bracing and ambitious production that wowed everyone who saw it".

[48][14] Lodge's collected written works included books and essays of fiction, literary criticism, and autobiography, as well as a number of plays and screenplays.