The novel follows the academic and romantic tribulations of the eponymous James (Jim) Dixon, a reluctant history lecturer at an unnamed provincial English university.

To establish his credentials he must also ensure the publication of his first scholarly article, but he eventually discovers that the editor to whom he submitted it has translated it into Italian and passed it off as his own.

[6] Margaret employs emotional blackmail to appeal to Dixon's sense of duty and pity while keeping him in an ambiguous and sexless limbo.

Dixon's growing closeness to Christine upsets Bertrand, who is using her to reach her well-connected Scottish uncle, Julius Gore-Urquhart, and get a job from him.

Having attempted to calm his nerves by drinking too much, partially at the urging of Gore-Urquhart, he caps his uncertain performance by angrily mocking and denouncing the university culture of arty pretentiousness and passes out.

Christopher Hitchens described it as the funniest book of the second half of the 20th century, writing: "Lucky Jim illustrates a crucial human difference between the little guy and the small man.

"[10] Olivia Laing, writing in The Guardian: "Remarkable for its relentless skewering of artifice and pretension, Lucky Jim also contains some of the finest comic set pieces in the language.

"[11] Margaret Drabble, although defending Monica Jones, Philip Larkin's paramour, against Amis's caricature of her in Lucky Jim, wrote in the New Statesman that "Monica as Margaret Peel, a needy, dowdy academic spinster, was the version that first lodged in my consciousness, as a scarecrow alarming enough to warn any woman off the academic life".

Keith Barron starred in Further Adventures of Lucky Jim, a 1967 seven-episode BBC TV series based on the character and set in the "swinging London" of 1967.