Camden College is a fictional

Fictional location

Fictional locations are places that exist only in fiction and not in reality. Writers may create and describe such places to serve as backdrop for their fictional works. Fictional locations are also created for use as settings in Role-playing games such as Dungeons and Dragons...

 liberal arts

Liberal arts

The term liberal arts refers to those subjects which in classical antiquity were considered essential for a free citizen to study. Grammar, Rhetoric and Logic were the core liberal arts. In medieval times these subjects were extended to include mathematics, geometry, music and astronomy...

 college

College

A college is an educational institution or a constituent part of an educational institution. Usage varies in English-speaking nations...

, which appears in the works of Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis

Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 different languages. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...

, Jill Eisenstadt

Jill Eisenstadt

Jill Eisenstadt is an American novelist, screenwriter, teacher and freelance journalist.Eisenstadt was born in Queens, New York and attended Bennington College, graduating in 1985. She was considered part of the 'Literary Brat Pack' whose members included Bret Easton Ellis, Jay McInerney, and...

, and Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Lethem

Jonathan Allen Lethem is an American novelist, essayist and short story writer. His first novel, Gun, with Occasional Music, a genre work that mixed elements of science fiction and detective fiction, was published in 1994. It was followed by three more science fiction novels...

. Whereas Ellis' Camden College is located in New Hampshire

New Hampshire

New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...

, Lethem's Camden is in Vermont

Vermont

Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...

, and is notable for being the most expensive college in America. All three of the writers attended Bennington College

Bennington College

Bennington College is a liberal arts college located in Bennington, Vermont, USA. The college was founded in 1932 as a women's college and became co-educational in 1969.-History:-Early years:...

, which is really located in Vermont, and was at one time notorious for being the most expensive college in America. Bennington graduate Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt

Donna Tartt is an American writer and author of the novels The Secret History and The Little Friend . She won the WH Smith Literary Award for The Little Friend in 2003.-Early life:...

 uses the same Bennington-inspired backdrop for her 1992 novel The Secret History

The Secret History

The Secret History, the first novel by Mississippi-born writer Donna Tartt, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1992. A 75,000 print order was made for the first edition , and the book became a bestseller.Set in New England, The Secret History tells the story of a closely knit group of six classics...

, but for her it is Hampden College. However, Eisenstadt and Lethem uses 'Camden' in From Rockaway (1987) and The Forstress of Solitude

The Fortress of Solitude (novel)

The Fortress of Solitude is a 2003 semi-autobiographical novel by Jonathan Lethem set in Brooklyn and spanning the 1970s, '80s, and '90s. It follows two teenage friends, Dylan Ebdus and Mingus Rude, one white and one black, who discover a magic ring...

(2003), respectively.

Camden is first mentioned in Ellis' debut novel

Debut novel

A debut novel is the first novel an author publishes. Debut novels are the author's first opportunity to make an impact on the publishing industry, and thus the success or failure of a debut novel can affect the ability of the author to publish in the future...

 Less Than Zero (1985), and is the central setting of his next, The Rules of Attraction

The Rules of Attraction

The Rules of Attraction is a dark comedy and satirical novel by Bret Easton Ellis published in 1987. The novel focuses on a handful of rowdy and often sexually promiscuous, spoiled Bohemian college students at a liberal arts college in 1980s New Hampshire, primarily focusing on three of them who...

(1987). Eidenstadt's From Rockaway and Tartt's The Secret History both depict working class young people who gain scholarships to the fictionalized liberal arts college; both are alluded to in The Rules of Attraction (Ellis having read the first draft of Secret History). Characters said to have attended Camden appear in Ellis' American Psycho

American Psycho

American Psycho is a psychological thriller and satirical novel by Bret Easton Ellis, published in 1991. The story is told in the first person by the protagonist, serial killer and Manhattan businessman Patrick Bateman. The book's graphic violence and sexual content generated a great deal of...

(1991), The Informers

The Informers

The Informers is a collection of short stories, seemingly linked by the same continuity, authored by American author Bret Easton Ellis. It was first published as a whole in 1994. Chapters 6 and 7, "Water from the Sun" and "Discovering Japan", were published separately in the UK by Picador in 2007...

(1994) and Glamorama

Glamorama

Glamorama is a novel by American writer Bret Easton Ellis. It was published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1998. Unlike Ellis' previous novels, Glamorama is set in and satirizes the 1990s, specifically celebrity culture and consumerism...

(1998), the latter of which features flashback sequences

Flashback (narrative)

Flashback is an interjected scene that takes the narrative back in time from the current point the story has reached. Flashbacks are often used to recount events that happened before the story’s primary sequence of events or to fill in crucial backstory...

 to the characters' Camden days. In Jonathan Lethem's The Fortress of Solitude (2003), Camden appears later in the novel once main character Dylan Ebdus begins college. In Ellis pseudo-autobiographical horror novel Lunar Park

Lunar Park

Lunar Park is a novel by Bret Easton Ellis with elements of faux autobiography and pastiche. It was released by Knopf on August 16, 2005. It is notable for being the first book written by Ellis to use past tense narrative.-Plot summary:...

(2005), the fictional Bret Easton Ellis attended Camden College and recalls many of its fictional characters,