Higher Learning: 25 Books About Teachers & Schools in Literature

For most of us, schools and teachers have played a big role in our lives. Discover a wide selection of books about schools, the students that attend them, and the teachers that dedicate their lives to educating young people. Touching, amusing and enlightening - you're bound to be educated by this reading list.

The likes of Miss Jean Brodie, Mr Chipping, Skullion from Porterhouse Blue and the decadent Sebastian Flyte - plus his teddy Aloysius - from Brideshead Revisited are among literature's finest creations. Many novelists have used schools or colleges as settings that fascinate readers. The relationship between student and teacher is revisited again and again. It's a scenario everyone can understand.

Go back to school with Tom Wolfe, John Knowles, Malcolm Bradbury and many other fine writers.

25 "Educational" Books

Brideshead Revisited

by Evelyn Waugh

The decline of the English upper classes comes into focus at Oxford University.

Pictures from an Institution

by Randall Jarrell

Poet Randall Jarrell's only novel, a comedy of manners set at a progressive women's college, inspired by his experience teaching at Sarah Lawrence.

The History Man

by Ray Bradbury

A funny novel about a radical university tutor who is a self-appointed revolutionary hero.

Mr. Pip

by Lloyd Jones

An isolated island during a civil war and the teacher whose teaching methods drive a wedge between a girl and her mother.

The Graduate

by Charles Webb

The story of college student Benjamin Braddock's affair with Mrs. Robinson.

Tom Brown's School Days

by Thomas Hughes

The classic story of public school life set at Rugby, and with the ruthless Flashman.

Porterhouse Blue

by Tom Sharpe

The riotous life of the insular academic community of Porterhouse College Cambridge.

Goodbye, Mr. Chips

by James Hilton

The poignant story of a dedicated, gentle & unassuming schoolteacher.

Matilda

by Roald Dahl

Matilda applies her mental powers to rid the school of the evil, child-hating headmistress.

Wonder Boys

by Michael Chabon

An aging novelist with writers block who teaches at small colleges and is on a fast track to total ruin.

The Crazed

by Ha Jin

A prominent Chinese university professor suffers a brain injury and a favorite student and future son-in-law becomes his caretaker.

Stover at Yale

by Owen Johnson

The quintessential collegiate coming of age novel follows "The Dink" though four years of football and more.

This Side of Paradise

by F. Scott Fitzgerald

Amory Blaine, intent on rebelling against Midwestern upbringing, attends Princeton to acquire the patina of Eastern sophistication.

The Group

by Mary McCarthy

Eight Vassar graduates meet in New York following commencement to attend a wedding of one of their members and reconvene seven years later at her funeral.

A Separate Peace

by John Knowles

Two students' competitive friendship at a New England preparatory school during World War II.

The Secret History

by Donna Tartt

An impoverished student at a New England college falls in with an exclusive clique of rich scholars and learns the dreadful secret that keeps them together.

Old School

by Tobias Wolff

A New England prep school's mystique is rooted in literature and for some boys this becomes an obsession.

The Second Form at St. Clare's

by Enid Blyton

The twins don't like the two characters who are head of their new form and have some delightful ways of dealing with them.

The Class

by Erich Segal

Follows five young men who enter Harvard in 1954 and then 25 years later at their graduation reunion.

I Am Charlotte Simmons

by Tom Wolfe

A freshman learns that for the uppercrust coeds of Dupont, sex, being cool, and kegs trump academic achievement every time.

The Rule of Four

by Ian Cladwell & Dustin Thomason

A 15th century manuscript, Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, is deciphered by four Princeton students.

Up the Down Staircase

by Bel Kaufman

A story of a committed, idealistic teacher whose clash with school bureaucracy is a timeless lesson for students, teachers and parents.

Prep

by Curtis Sittenfeld

Fourteen-year-old Lee Fiora enrolls at the prestigious Ault School of Massachusetts and is surrounded by beautiful, wealthy students. She immediately feels like an outsider.

On Beauty

by Zadie Smith

A story of an interracial family living in the university town of Wellington, Massachusetts, whose misadventures in the culture wars-on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Accursed

by Joyce Carol Oates

An eerie, unforgettable story of possession, power, and loss in early-twentieth-century Princeton.