The Picturegoers

{{Short description|1960 novel by David Lodge}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}

{{Infobox book |

| name = The Picturegoers

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| image = File:ThePicturegoers.jpg

| caption = First edition

| author = David Lodge

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| country = United Kingdom

| language = English

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| publisher = MacGibbon & Kee

| release_date = 1960

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| media_type = Print (hardcover, paperback)

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The Picturegoers (1960) is the first novel by British writer David Lodge.

The novel relates the story of a group of Roman Catholics residing in London.{{Cite web |title=The Picturegoers {{!}} novel by Lodge {{!}} Britannica |url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Picturegoers |access-date=2024-03-21 |website=www.britannica.com |language=en}} It interweaves scenes at and near Brickley Palladium in south-east London with characters like Mark Underwood, a Catholic undergraduate, and Clare representing different attitudes to religion. The novel delves into their relationship of Mark and Clare and the tension that starts to redefine their personalities.{{Cite web |date=1993-05-28 |title=BOOK REVIEW / If only you had faith: The Picturegoers - David Lodge: |url=https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/book-review-if-only-you-had-faith-the-picturegoers-david-lodge-penguin-pounds-4-99-2316786.html |access-date=2024-03-21 |website=The Independent |language=en}} Movies are used as a touchstone for exploring Catholic values in a changing world, where the cinema introduces values and behaviours from the greater society that differ from those of the traditional community. Various characters are portrayed, representing, to a certain extent, common types of people in a small earlyish twentieth-century British London neighbourhood, though the focus is on one lower-middle-class family.