Novels about Cambridge

Exploring a university city through its literature

Hello! and welcome to Cambridge Ladies’ Dining Society. This week’s post is a reading list of novels set in Cambridge, and I’m grateful for so many brilliant recommendations from you, dear readers. *I have now expanded this list* based on your helpful emails and Comments - thank you! Read on for my some of my favourite literary publications on this platform, and news of a new Substack directory for the best bookish writing.

Cambridge fiction is flourishing

There’s a lot of them, and many are much-loved classics – twentieth-century novels set in Cambridge, that is. They include: E. M. Forster’s The Longest Journey (1907) and Maurice, posthumously published in 1971; Virginia Woolf’s Jacob’s Room (1922); Rosamond Lehmann’s Dusty Answer (1927); C.P. Snow’s The Masters (1951); Tom Sharpe’s Porterhouse Blue (1974); Frederic Raphael’s The Glittering Prizes (1976), the seven books (so far) of James Runcie’s murder mystery series ‘Grantchester Mysteries’ from 2012 onwards.

My post today dives into a few other Cambridge novels you might be less familiar with - and why they are worth reading today.