Twenty Favorite Novels About English or Creative Writing Teachers Who Are Like, “Have You Read My New Novel…?”
(Assertions like the one above are maddening to me because they’re so reductive—but, as always, if you go hunting for a trope, any trope, you’re bound to find it. Here then, alphabetically by author, are my twenty favorite novels about teachers of English, literature, or creative writing, roughly half of whom commit adultery. The soundtrack is by The Police.)
Villette by Charlotte Brontë
Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon
All Is Forgotten, Nothing Is Lost by Lan Samantha Chang
Disgrace by J. M. Coetzee
The Lost Daughter by Elena Ferrante
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
Book: A Novel by Robert Grudin
Some Other Place. The Right Place. by Donald Harington
A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood
Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman
The Horned Man by James Lasdun *
Thinks… by David Lodge
The Friend by Sigrid Nunez
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
The Human Stain by Philip Roth
Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher
Shyness and Dignity by Dag Solstad
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Stoner by John Williams
The Hair of Harold Roux by Thomas Williams
* though the teacher in this one is technically a gender studies professor
— April 24, 2026