More than thirty-five years after the turbulence attending the publication of his overwhelmingly popular first novel, Lucky Jim (1954), Kingsley Amis remains a controversial figure in English letters. Many find him an affable and entertaining novelist...

"Crisp, witty, sardonic...." That is one way to introduce Kingsley Amis, the way one editor, Edward Lucie-Smith, took in 1970. Amis's wit began to delight the world in 1954 when his first novel, Lucky Jim, appeared. In verse it had begun to delight his...

Author of seventeen novels, three poetry collections, and more than twenty short stories, Kingsley Amis is a writer whose literary style defies categorization. In Kingsley Amis (1989) Richard Bradford warns the reader that "Amis is an 'experimental'...

On Sunday evening, as news of the death of Sir Kingsley Amis spread through the literary world, reporters hit the telephones in search of assessments of his life and work from other novelists. The tributes poured in, even though it's obvious that reputations are...

Grumpy old man "WHAT I want", wrote Kingsley Amis in 1954, a few weeks before his debut novel "Lucky Jim" made him famous, "is a chance to decide, from personal experience, that a life of cocktail parties, cars, weekending at rich houses,...

James Bond will soon be back, in bookstores. "Devil May Care," a novel written by British author Sebastian Faulks and authorized by the estate of the late Ian Fleming, is due to come out in 2008, the centennial of Fleming's birth.According to the Doubleday Broadway...

George MacDonald Fraser, author of the "Flashman" series of historical adventure yarns, died Wednesday, his publisher said. He was 82.Fraser died following a battle with cancer, said Nicholas Latimer, director of publicity for Knopf, which will release Fraser's latest work "The Reavers" in the United...

In the following essay, Gindin, a professor of English at the University of Michigan, considers the nature of comedy as well as the political and moral tone of Amis's work.

In the following review of The Biographer's Moustache, Wolcott argues that Amis has been too harshly criticized and provides an overview of his career.

In the following essay, Watson, a longtime friend and colleague of Amis's, discusses their friendship, praising Amis as a novelist who expressed their generation's experiences.