Campus novel
is a novel, usually comic or satirical,
in which the action is set within the enclosed world of a university (or
similar seat of learning) and highlights the follies of academic life. Many
novels have presented nostalgic evocations of college days, but the campus
novel in the usual modern sense dates from the 1950s: Mary McCarthy's The
Groves of Academe (1952) and Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim (1954) began a
significant tradition in modern fiction including John Earth's Giles GoatBoy (1966),
David Lodge's Changing Places (1975), and Robertson Davies's The Rebel Angels
(1982).