Goodbye, Mr. Chips (originally Good-bye, Mr. Chips) is a novel by James Hilton, published in the United States in June 1934 by Little, Brown and Company and in the United Kingdom in October of that same year by Hodder & Stoughton. The novel was adapted into two films and two television versions.

The story had originally been issued as a supplement to the British Weekly, an evangelical newspaper, in 1933 but came to prominence when it was reprinted as the lead piece of the April 1934 issue of The Atlantic. The success of the Atlantic Monthly publication prompted a book deal between Mr. Hilton and Little, Brown and Company. Little, Brown published the first printing of this story in book form in June 1934. The depression was a factor for most publishing houses and Little Brown was no exception; they carefully released a small first printing. Public demand for more was immediate, and Little Brown went into an almost immediate reprinting the same month. The demand continued and Little Brown continued to reprint the book for many months with at least two reprintings per month. The first printing of the British edition was in October 1934. This edition was published by Hodder & Stoughton who had the benefit of observing the success of Little Brown and released a larger first printing. Even with this benefit, Hodder & Stoughton found themselves going into reprints as the public's demand for the book was enormous. After the huge success of this book, James Hilton became a bestselling author.

The setting for Goodbye Mr. Chips is believed[who?] to have been based on The Leys School, Cambridge, where James Hilton was a pupil (1915?18). Hilton is reported to have said that the inspiration for the protagonist, Mr. Chips, came from many sources, including his father, who was the headmaster of Chapel End School. However, Mr. Chips is also likely to have been based on W.H. Balgarnie, one of the masters at The Leys (1900?30), who was in charge of the Leys Fortnightly (in which Hilton's first short stories and essays were published). Over the years, old boys have written to Geoffery Houghton, a master of The Leys for a number of years and a historian of the school, confirming the links between Chipping and Balgarnie, who eventually died at Porthmadog at the age of 82.[2] He had been linked with the school for 51 years and spent his last years in modest lodgings opposite. Again, like Mr. Chips, Balgarnie was a strict disciplinarian, but would also invite boys to visit him for tea and biscuits.

Hilton wrote upon Balgarnie's death that "Balgarnie was, I suppose, the chief model for my story. When I read so many other stories about public school life, I am struck by the fact that I suffered no such purgatory as their authors apparently did, and much of this miracle was due to Balgarnie."[3] Furthermore, the "mutton chop" facial hair of one of the masters at The Leys earned him the nickname "Chops", a likely inspiration for Mr Chips's name.

The best known screen version, is the 1939 film starring Robert Donat, Greer Garson, Terry Kilburn, John Mills and Paul Henreid. Donat won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in the lead role, beating Clark Gable, James Stewart, Laurence Olivier and Mickey Rooney. While some of the incidents depicted in the various screen adaptations do not appear in the book, this film is generally faithful to the original story.