AMIS, Kingsley

“If you can't annoy somebody, there is little point in writing.”

Kingsley Amis was born in Clapham, south London, and was raised in Norbury - in his later estimation "not really a place, it's an expression on a map [-] really I should say I came from Norbury station".  He was educated at the City of London School and St. John's College, Oxford, where he took a first in English.

Following Oxford he became a lecturer in English at the University of Wales, Swansea (1949–1961), whilst always harbouring a desire to become a writer. In 1954 Amis's first novel Lucky Jim was published to great acclaim; critics saw it as having caught the flavour of Britain in the 1950s, ushering in a new style of fiction.  The novel won the Somerset Maugham Award for fiction and Amis was associated with the writers labelled the Angry Young Men.

Amis is chiefly known as a comedic novelist of mid to late 20th century British life, but his literary work extended into poetry, essays and criticism, short stories, food and drink writing, anthologies, and a number of novels in genres such as science fiction and mystery. He continued throughout his career to write poetry which is known for its typically straightforward and accessible style, yet which often masks a nuance of thought and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times in his writing career for Ending Up (1974), Jake's Thing (1978), and finally winning the prize for The Old Devils in 1986.  He was knighted in 1990.

Please scroll down to view our current holdings of first editions and signed copies by Amis.