Jim Dixon is a Medieval history lecturer at a provincial university in the North of England, but he isn't particularly dedicated to his job. Having made a bad first impression in the history department, he is concerned about being fired at the end of his first year, and tries to hold his position by maintaining good relations with his superior, Professor Welch - an absent-minded and unbearably pompous man.
Dixon doesn't have the tact and prudence expected in provincial bourgeois bʊəʒ wɑ: society. He has contempt for just about everyone around him, including his unbearable "girlfriend" Margaret Peel (a fellow, but senior, lecturer), who is recovering from a suicide attempt.
One day Dixon meets the good-looking Christine Callaghan, she is dating Professor Welch's son Bertrand. And Bertrand is an amateur painter whose pomposity particularly annoys Dixon. After a bad start, it turns out that Christine has very little patience for the world of artists and connoisseurs. Although Christine and Dixon do not hit it off particularly well at first, the two begin to be attracted to each other; Bertrand, a social climber, is using his connection with Christine to reach her wealthy and well-connected Scottish uncle, who is reportedly seeking an assistant in London.
The novel reaches its climax in Dixon's lecture on "Merrie England," which goes horribly wrong as Dixon, attempting to calm his nerves with a little too much alcohol, uncontrollably begins to mock Welch and everything else that he hates; he finally goes into convulsions and passes out. Welch, of course, fires Dixon.
However, Christine's uncle offers Dixon the coveted assistant job in London that pays much better than his lecturing position. In the end, Jim Dixon and Christine encounter the Welches on the road. He cannot help but walk right up to them with a knowing smile, with Christine's arm on his.
Lucky Jim is the antihero Jim Dixon. His job is in constant danger, often for good reason. Dixon's ambitious plans to improve his situation are fruitless. The class distinctions are unbreakable. Behind the story was the Education Act of 1944, which attempted to assimilate a larger amount of working- and lower-middle-class students into English university life.
Dixon, though highly educated, is completely impatient with the “arty” tendencies of other characters, such as the painter Bertrand, and defiantly prefers popular jazz to “filthy Mozart” and madrigals. This led to the novel, and its author, being classed amongst the “angry young men” of the 1950s.
Less comfortable for some readers is the way the book deals with female characters. The “angry young men” were a specifically male coterie, and the women in Lucky Jim seem to be either neurotic, passive or threatening. The casual sexism in Dixon's “realisation” that pretty girls are more fun to be around than plain girls may cause readers to wonder how Jim would rate his own charms, or indeed to condemn him out of hand.