The novella tells the story of a much-beloved schoolteacher, Mr. Chipping, and his forty-three-year tenure at Brookfield Grammar School, a fictional second-rate British boys’ public boarding school located in the fictional village of Brookfield, situated in the Fenlands. Mr. Chipping has a rigidly orthodox personality: conventional in manner and beliefs, very pedantic about education, and an unpopular disciplinarian with students. Brookfield's headmaster and faculty call him "Chips", while the boys call him "Ditchy" (short for "ditchwater"). He conquers his inability to connect with his students, and his shyness, when he marries Katherine, a young woman whom he meets on holiday. She adopts the boys' nickname for him. Katherine charms the Brookfield faculty and Headmaster, and quickly wins the favor of Brookfield's students, who call her "Mrs Chips". Despite Chipping's own mediocre academic record, and the sense that Greek and Latin (his academic subjects) are becoming obsolete, he has an illustrious career as an inspiring educator. In his later years, his sense of humour blooms into a quaint richness that pleases everyone, but is without any malice.
Although the book is unabashedly sentimental, it also depicts the sweeping social changes that Chips experiences throughout his life: he begins his tenure at Brookfield in September 1870, at the age of 22, as the Franco-Prussian War was breaking out; he lay on his deathbed at the age of 85, shortly after Adolf Hitler's rise to power in November 1933. He is seen by his colleagues as an individual able to connect to anyone on a human level, beyond petty politics.