literary critic A genre of arts criticism, literary criticism or literary studies is the study, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. Modern literary criticism is often influenced by literary theory, which is the philosophical analysis of literature' ...

Downing College, Cambridge Downing College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 950 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to the university between 1596 and 1869, and is often described as the oldest of ...

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.Trinity Street, gown blown out horizontal in his slipstream. He looked as if walking briskly was something he had practised in a wind-tunnel."

Early life and education

Leavis was born in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a List of cities in the United Kingdom, city and non-metropolitan district in the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It is the county town of Cambridgeshire and is located on the River Cam, north of London. As of the 2021 Unit ...

in 1895 to Harry Leavis (1862–1921) and Kate Sarah Moore (1874–1929). His father was a cultured man who ran a shop in Cambridge that sold pianos and other musical instruments, and his son was to retain a respect for him throughout his life. Leavis was educated at

The Perse School The Perse School is a Private schools in the United Kingdom, private school (English Private schools in the United Kingdom, fee-charging Day school, day and, in the case of the Perse, a former boarding school) in Cambridge, England. Founded i ...

in Cambridge (in English terms a Public School), whose headmaster was Dr W. H. D. Rouse. Rouse was a classicist and known for his "direct method", a practice which required teachers to carry on classroom conversations with their pupils in Latin and classical Greek. Though he had some fluency in foreign languages, Leavis felt that his native language was the only one on which he was able to speak with authority. His extensive reading in the classical languages is not therefore strongly evident in his work. Leavis had won a scholarship from the Perse School to

Emmanuel College, Cambridge Emmanuel College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. The college was founded in 1584 by Sir Walter Mildmay, Chancellor of the Exchequer to Elizabeth I. The site on which the college sits was once a priory for Dominican mo ...

, to study history. Britain declared war on Germany soon after he matriculated, when he was 19. Leavis left Cambridge after his first year as an undergraduate and joined the Friends' Ambulance Unit (FAU) at

York York is a cathedral city in North Yorkshire, England, with Roman Britain, Roman origins, sited at the confluence of the rivers River Ouse, Yorkshire, Ouse and River Foss, Foss. It has many historic buildings and other structures, such as a Yor ...

in 1915. After the introduction of

conscription Conscription, also known as the draft in the United States and Israel, is the practice in which the compulsory enlistment in a national service, mainly a military service, is enforced by law. Conscription dates back to antiquity and it conti ...

in 1916, when his brother Ralph also joined the FAU, he benefited from the blanket recognition of the members of the Friends' Ambulance Unit as

conscientious objectors A conscientious objector is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of conscience or freedom of religion, religion. The term has also been extended to objecting to working for ...

. Leavis is quoted as saying: "But after the Bloody Somme there could be no question for anyone who knew what modern war was like of joining the army." He worked in France behind the Western Front, carrying a copy of Milton's poems with him. His wartime experiences had a lasting effect on him, making him prone to insomnia. He maintained that exposure to

poison gas Many gases have toxic properties, which are often assessed using the LC50 (median lethal concentration) measure. In the United States, many of these gases have been assigned an NFPA 704 health rating of 4 (may be fatal) or 3 (may cause serious ...

retained in the clothes of soldiers who had been gassed damaged his physical health, but that his poor digestion was due to "...not gas at Ypres, but the things I didn't say". Leavis was slow to recover from the war, and he was later to refer to it as "the great hiatus". He said: "The war, to put it egotistically, was bad luck for us." On his return from the war in 1919, Leavis resumed his studies at Cambridge and obtained a lower second-class in Part I of the history

tripos TRIPOS (''TRIvial Portable Operating System'') is a computer operating system. Development started in 1976 at the Computer Laboratory of Cambridge University and it was headed by Dr. Martin Richards. The first version appeared in January 1978 a ...

. He then changed his field of study to English and became a pupil in the newly founded English School. Despite graduating with first-class honours in his final examinations, Leavis was not seen as a strong candidate for a research fellowship and instead embarked on a

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

, then an unusual career move for an aspiring academic. In 1924, Leavis presented a thesis on ''The Relationship of Journalism to Literature'', which "studied the rise and earlier development of the press in England". This work contributed to his lifelong concern with the way in which the ethos of a periodical can both reflect and mould the cultural aspirations of a wider public.

Career

In 1927 Leavis was appointed as a probationary lecturer for the university, and, when his first substantial publications began to appear a few years later, their style was much influenced by the demands of teaching. In 1929 Leavis married one of his students, Queenie Roth, and this union resulted in a collaboration that yielded many critical works. 1932 was an ''

annus mirabilis ''Annus mirabilis'' (pl. ''anni mirabiles'') is a Latin phrase that means "marvelous year", "wonderful year", or "miraculous year". This term has been used to refer to several years during which events of major importance are remembered, notably ...

'' for them, when Leavis published ''New Bearings in English Poetry'', his wife published ''Fiction and the Reading Public'', and the quarterly periodical '' Scrutiny'' was founded. A small publishing house, The Minority Press, was founded by Gordon Fraser, another of Leavis's students, in 1930, and served for several years as an additional outlet for the work of Leavis and some of his students. In 1931 Leavis was appointed director of studies in English at

Downing College Downing College is a Colleges of the University of Cambridge, constituent college of the University of Cambridge and currently has around 950 students. Founded in 1800, it was the only college to be added to the university between 1596 and 1869, ...

, where he taught for the next 30 years. He soon founded ''Scrutiny'', the critical quarterly that he edited until 1953, using it as a vehicle for the new Cambridge criticism, upholding rigorous intellectual standards and attacking the dilettante elitism he believed to characterise the

Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group was a group of associated British writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the early 20th century. Among the people involved in the group were Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster, Vanessa Bell, a ...

. ''Scrutiny'' provided a forum for (on occasion) identifying important contemporary work and (more commonly) reviewing the traditional canon by serious criteria. This criticism was informed by a teacher's concern to present the essential to students, taking into consideration time constraints and a limited range of experience. Leavis was a friend of Austrian philosopher

Ludwig Wittgenstein Ludwig Josef Johann Wittgenstein ( ; ; 26 April 1889 – 29 April 1951) was an Austrian philosopher who worked primarily in logic, the philosophy of mathematics, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language. From 1929 to 1947, Witt ...

, whom he met at the house of their mutual friend, the logician W.E. Johnson. He later wrote a piece ''Memories of Wittgenstein'' recalling their friendship. ''New Bearings in English Poetry'' was the first major volume of criticism Leavis was to publish, and it provides insight into his own critical positions. He has been frequently (but often erroneously) associated with the American school of

New Critics New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned a ...

, a group which advocated close reading and detailed textual analysis of poetry over, or even instead of, an interest in the mind and personality of the poet, sources, the history of ideas and political and social implications. Although there are undoubtedly similarities between Leavis's approach to criticism and that of the New Critics (most particularly in that both take the work of art itself as the primary focus of critical discussion), Leavis is ultimately distinguishable from them, since he never adopted (and was explicitly hostile to) a theory of the poem as a self-contained and self-sufficient aesthetic and formal artefact, isolated from the society, culture and tradition from which it emerged. ''New Bearings'', devoted principally to

Gerard Manley Hopkins Gerard Manley Hopkins (28 July 1844 – 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Society of Jesus, Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame places him among the leading English poets. His Prosody (linguistics), prosody – notably his concept of sprung ...

,

William Butler Yeats William Butler Yeats (, 13 June 186528 January 1939), popularly known as W. B. Yeats, was an Irish poet, dramatist, writer, and literary critic who was one of the foremost figures of 20th century in literature, 20th-century literature. He was ...

,

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...

, and

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an List of poets from the United States, American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Collaboration with Nazi Germany and Fascist Ita ...

, was an attempt to identify the essential new achievements in modern poetry. It also discussed at length and praised the work of Ronald Bottrall, whose importance was not to be confirmed by readers and critics. In 1933 Leavis published ''For Continuity'', which was a selection of ''Scrutiny'' essays. This publication, along with ''Culture and the Environment'' (a joint effort with Denys Thompson), stressed the importance of an informed and discriminating, highly trained intellectual elite whose existence within university English departments would help preserve the cultural continuity of English life and literature. In ''Education and the University'' (1943), Leavis argued that "there is a prior cultural achievement of language; language is not a detachable instrument of thought and communication. It is the historical embodiment of its community's assumptions and aspirations at levels which are so subliminal much of the time that language is their only index". Leavis is sometimes seen as having contributed to the

mythos Myth is a genre of folklore consisting primarily of narratives that play a fundamental role in a society. For scholars, this is very different from the vernacular usage of the term "myth" that refers to a belief that is not true. Instead, the ...

of Merrie England with his notion of the "organic community", by which he seems to have meant a community with a deeply rooted and locally self-sufficient culture that he claimed to have existed in the villages of 17th and 18th century England and which was destroyed by the machine and mass culture introduced by the

Industrial Revolution The Industrial Revolution, sometimes divided into the First Industrial Revolution and Second Industrial Revolution, was a transitional period of the global economy toward more widespread, efficient and stable manufacturing processes, succee ...

. Historians of the era have suggested that the idea was based on a misreading of history and that such communities had never existed. No historians of

Early Modern Britain Early modern Britain is the history of the island of Great Britain roughly corresponding to the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. Major historical events in early modern British history include numerous wars, especially with France, along with the ...

have given credence to the notion of the organic community. In 1948, Leavis focused his attention on fiction and made his general statement about the English novel in '' The Great Tradition'', where he traced this claimed tradition through

Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...

,

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...

,

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

, and

Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the Eng ...

. Contentiously, Leavis, and his followers, excluded major authors such as

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

,

Laurence Sterne Laurence Sterne (24 November 1713 – 18 March 1768) was an Anglo-Irish novelist and Anglican cleric. He is best known for his comic novels ''The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman'' (1759–1767) and ''A Sentimental Journey Thro ...

and

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...

from his canon, characterising Dickens as a "mere entertainer", but eventually, following the revaluation of Dickens by

Edmund Wilson Edmund Wilson Jr. (May 8, 1895 – June 12, 1972) was an American writer, literary critic, and journalist. He is widely regarded as one of the most important literary critics of the 20th century. Wilson began his career as a journalist, writing ...

and

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950) was an English novelist, poet, essayist, journalist, and critic who wrote under the pen name of George Orwell. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to a ...

, Leavis changed his position, publishing ''Dickens the Novelist'' in 1970. The Leavisites' downgrading of Hardy may have damaged Leavis's own authority. In 1950, in the introduction to ''Mill on Bentham and Coleridge'', a publication he edited, Leavis set out the historical importance of utilitarian thought. Leavis found Bentham to epitomize the scientific drift of culture and social thinking, which was in his view the enemy of the holistic,

humane Humanity is a virtue linked with altruistic ethics derived from the human condition. It signifies human love and compassion towards each other. Humanity differs from mere justice in that there is a level of altruism towards individuals included i ...

understanding he championed. ''The Common Pursuit'', another collection of his essays from ''Scrutiny'', was published in 1952. Outside his work on English poetry and the novel, this is Leavis's best-known and most influential work. A decade later Leavis was to earn much notoriety when he delivered his Richmond lecture, ''Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow'' at Downing College. Leavis vigorously attacked Snow's suggestion, from a 1959 lecture and book by C. P. Snow (see ''

The Two Cultures "The Two Cultures" is the first part of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow, which was published in book form as ''The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution'' the same year. Its thesis was that s ...

''), that practitioners of the scientific and humanistic disciplines should have some significant understanding of each other, and that a lack of knowledge of 20th century physics was comparable to an ignorance of

Shakespeare William Shakespeare ( 23 April 1564 – 23 April 1616) was an English playwright, poet and actor. He is widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's natio ...

. Leavis's ''ad hominem'' attacks on Snow's intelligence and abilities were widely decried in the British press by public figures such as Lord Boothby and

Lionel Trilling Lionel Mordecai Trilling (July 4, 1905 – November 5, 1975) was an American literary critic, short story writer, essayist, and teacher. He was one of the leading U.S. critics of the 20th century who analyzed the contemporary cultural, social, ...

. Leavis introduced the idea of the "third realm" as a name for the method of existence of literature; works which are not private like a dream or public in the sense of something that can be tripped over, but exist in human minds as a work of collaborative re-constitution. The notion of the "third realm" has not received much attention subsequently.

Character and reputation

As Leavis continued his career he became increasingly dogmatic, belligerent and paranoid, and Martin Seymour-Smith found him (and his disciples) to be "fanatic and rancid in manner". Leavis's conduct led to a breach with T. S. Eliot, who wrote Leavis's uncompromising zeal in promoting his views of literature drew mockery from quarters of the literary world involved in imaginative writing. In a letter that

Edith Sitwell Dame Edith Louisa Sitwell (7 September 1887 – 9 December 1964) was a British poet and critic and the eldest of the three literary Sitwells. She reacted badly to her eccentric, unloving parents and lived much of her life with her governess ...

wrote to Pamela Hansford Johnson in 1959 she described Leavis as "a tiresome, whining, pettyfogging little pipsqueak". Leavis (as "Simon Lacerous") and Scrutiny (as "Thumbscrew") were satirized by Frederick Crews in the chapter "Another Book to Cross off your List" of his lampoon of literary criticism theory '' The Pooh Perplex A Student Casebook''. In her novel '' Possession'', A. S. Byatt (who was herself taught by Leavis) wrote of one of her characters (Blackadder) "Leavis did to Blackadder what he did to serious students: he showed him the terrible, the magnificent importance and urgency of English literature and simultaneously deprived him of any confidence in his own capacity to contribute to or change it."

Tom Sharpe Thomas Ridley Sharpe (30 March 1928 – 6 June 2013) was an English satire, satirical novelist, best known for his ''Wilt (novel), Wilt'' series, as well as ''Porterhouse Blue'' and ''Blott on the Landscape,'' all three of which were adapted fo ...

, in his novel '' The Great Pursuit'', depicts a ludicrous series of events ending in the hero teaching Leavisite criticism as a religion in the American Bible Bel

In the mock epic heroic poem by

Clive James Clive James (born Vivian Leopold James; 7 October 1939 – 24 November 2019) was an Australian critic, journalist, broadcaster, writer and lyricist who lived and worked in the United Kingdom from 1962 until his death in 2019.The Fry Chronicles'',

Stephen Fry Sir Stephen John Fry (born 24 August 1957) is an English actor, broadcaster, comedian, director, narrator and writer. He came to prominence as a member of the comic act Fry and Laurie alongside Hugh Laurie, with the two starring in ''A Bit of ...

described Leavis as a "sanctimonious prick of only parochial significance" and said that Leavis had an "intense suspicious propensity to explode in wrath and anathematize anyone who dared disagree with him". Fry notes: The literary critic John Gross accuses Leavis of "narrowness, spitefulness, dogmatism", "distortion, omission and strident overstatement" and says that "the overall effect of his teaching has plainly been calculated ... to produce many of the characteristics of a religious or ideological sect." In 2006, Brooke Allen wrote "In the end, Leavis fell short of his own high humanistic ideals, through intellectual exclusivity and sheer bloody-mindedness, and the passionate advocate degenerated into the hectoring bigot.

Criticism

Overview

Leavis's proponents said that he introduced a "seriousness" into English studies, and some English and American university departments were shaped by his example and ideas. He appeared to possess a clear idea of literary criticism, and he was well known for his decisive and often provocative, and idiosyncratic, judgements. He insisted that valuation was the principal concern of criticism, that it must ensure that English literature should be a living reality operating as an informing spirit in society, and that criticism should involve the shaping of contemporary sensibility. Leavis's criticism can be grouped into four chronological stages. The first is that of his early publications and essays, including ''New Bearings in English Poetry'' (1932) and ''Revaluation'' (1936). Here he was concerned primarily with re-examining poetry from the 17th to 20th centuries, and this was accomplished under the strong influence of T. S. Eliot. Also during this early period Leavis sketched out his views about university education. He then turned his attention to fiction and the novel, producing ''The Great Tradition'' (1948) and ''D. H. Lawrence, Novelist'' (1955). Following this period Leavis pursued an increasingly complex treatment of literary, educational and social issues. Though the hub of his work remained literature, his perspective for commentary was noticeably broadening, and this was most visible in ''Nor Shall my Sword'' (1972). Two of his last publications embodied the critical sentiments of his final years; ''The Living Principle: 'English' as a Discipline of Thought'' (1975), and ''Thought, Words and Creativity: Art and Thought in Lawrence'' (1976). Although these later works have been sometimes called "philosophy", it has been argued that there is no abstract or theoretical context to justify such a description. In discussing the nature of language and value, Leavis implicitly treats the sceptical questioning that philosophical reflection starts from as an irrelevance from his standpoint as a literary critic – a position set out in his early exchange with René Wellek (reprinted in ''The Common Pursuit'').

On poetry

Leavis is often viewed as having been a better critic of poetry than of the novel. In ''New Bearings in English Poetry'' Leavis attacked the Victorian poetical ideal, suggesting that 19th-century poetry sought the consciously "poetical" and showed a separation of thought and feeling and a divorce from the real world. The influence of

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...

is easily identifiable in his criticism of Victorian poetry, and Leavis acknowledged this, saying in ''The Common Pursuit'' that, "It was Mr. Eliot who made us fully conscious of the weakness of that tradition" . In his later publication ''Revaluation'', the dependence on Eliot was still very much present, but Leavis demonstrated an individual critical sense operating in such a way as to place him among the distinguished modern critics. The early reception of

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist and playwright.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biography''. New York: Oxford University ...

and the reading of Hopkins were considerably enhanced by Leavis's proclamation of their greatness. His criticism of Milton, on the other hand, had no great impact on Milton's popular esteem. Many of his finest analyses of poems were reprinted in the late work, ''The Living Principle''.

On the novel

As a critic of the English novel, Leavis's main tenet stated that great novelists show an intense moral interest in life, and that this moral interest determines the nature of their form in fiction. Authors within this "tradition" were all characterised by a serious or responsible attitude to the moral complexity of life and included

Jane Austen Jane Austen ( ; 16 December 1775 – 18 July 1817) was an English novelist known primarily for #List of works, her six novels, which implicitly interpret, critique, and comment on the English landed gentry at the end of the 18th century ...

,

George Eliot Mary Ann Evans (22 November 1819 – 22 December 1880; alternatively Mary Anne or Marian), known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, poet, journalist, translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era. She wrot ...

,

Henry James Henry James ( – ) was an American-British author. He is regarded as a key transitional figure between literary realism and literary modernism, and is considered by many to be among the greatest novelists in the English language. He was the ...

,

Joseph Conrad Joseph Conrad (born Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, ; 3 December 1857 – 3 August 1924) was a Poles in the United Kingdom#19th century, Polish-British novelist and story writer. He is regarded as one of the greatest writers in the Eng ...

, and D. H. Lawrence, but excluded

Thomas Hardy Thomas Hardy (2 June 1840 – 11 January 1928) was an English novelist and poet. A Literary realism, Victorian realist in the tradition of George Eliot, he was influenced both in his novels and in his poetry by Romanticism, including the poetry ...

and

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English novelist, journalist, short story writer and Social criticism, social critic. He created some of literature's best-known fictional characters, and is regarded by ...

. In '' The Great Tradition'' Leavis attempted to set out his conception of the proper relation between form/composition and moral interest/art and life. Leavis, along with his wife, Q.D. Leavis, was later to revise his opinion of Dickens in their study, ''Dickens the Novelist'' (1970). He also praised the moral seriousness of American novelists such as

Nathaniel Hawthorne Nathaniel Hawthorne (né Hathorne; July 4, 1804 – May 19, 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion. He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, from a family long associat ...

,

Herman Melville Herman Melville (Name change, born Melvill; August 1, 1819 – September 28, 1891) was an American novelist, short story writer, and poet of the American Renaissance (literature), American Renaissance period. Among his best-known works ar ...

, and

Mark Twain Samuel Langhorne Clemens (November 30, 1835 – April 21, 1910), known by the pen name Mark Twain, was an American writer, humorist, and essayist. He was praised as the "greatest humorist the United States has produced," with William Fau ...

.

On the BBC

Leavis was one of the earliest detractors of the

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

. He accused the corporation's coverage of English literature of lacking impartiality, and of vulgarising the literary taste of British society.Christopher Hilliard, ''English as a Vocation: The 'Scrutiny' Movement''. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012 . (p. 96) In 1931, Leavis took issue with a BBC series of book discussions presented by

Harold Nicolson Sir Harold George Nicolson (21 November 1886 – 1 May 1968) was a British politician, writer, broadcaster and gardener. His wife was Vita Sackville-West. Early life and education Nicolson was born in Tehran, Persia, the youngest son of dipl ...

, claiming that Nicolson's programmes lacked the "sensitiveness of intelligence" which Leavis believed good literary criticism required. Throughout his career, Leavis constantly took issue with the BBC's motives and actions, even once jokingly referring to his "anti-BBC complex".

Later life and death

In 1964 Leavis resigned his fellowship at Downing and took up visiting professorships at the

University of Bristol The University of Bristol is a public university, public research university in Bristol, England. It received its royal charter in 1909, although it can trace its roots to a Merchant Venturers' school founded in 1595 and University College, Br ...

, the

University of Wales The University of Wales () is a confederal university based in Cardiff, Wales. Founded by royal charter in 1893 as a federal university with three constituent colleges – Aberystwyth, Bangor and Cardiff – the university was the first universit ...

and the

University of York The University of York (abbreviated as or ''York'' for Post-nominal letters, post-nominals) is a public Collegiate university, collegiate research university in York, England. Established in 1963, the university has expanded to more than thir ...

. His final volumes of criticism were ''Nor Shall My Sword'' (1972), ''The Living Principle'' (1975) and ''Thought, Words and Creativity'' (1976). He was appointed a Member of the Order of the Companions of Honour (CH) in the 1978 New Year Honours. Leavis died in 1978, at the age of 82,Ezard, John (18 April 1978)
"Obituary: Frank Raymond Leavis"
''The Guardian''. His wife, Queenie D. Leavis, died in 1981. He features as a main character, played by

Ian Holm Sir Ian Holm Cuthbert (12 September 1931 – 19 June 2020) was an English actor. After graduating from RADA (Royal Academy of Dramatic Art) and beginning his career on the British stage as a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, he became a ...

, in the 1991

BBC The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is a British public service broadcaster headquartered at Broadcasting House in London, England. Originally established in 1922 as the British Broadcasting Company, it evolved into its current sta ...

TV feature
''The Last Romantics''
The story focuses on his relationship with his mentor, Sir

Arthur Quiller-Couch Sir Arthur Thomas Quiller-Couch (; 21 November 186312 May 1944) was a Cornish people, British writer who published using the pen name, pseudonym Q. Although a prolific novelist, he is remembered mainly for the monumental publication ''The Oxfor ...

, and the students.

References

Works cited

* * * Day, Gary. ''Re-Reading Leavis: Culture and Literary Criticism'', Palgrave Macmillan (1996) * * * Howarth, T. E. B., ''Cambridge Between Two Wars'', Collins (1978). * * * Mulhern, Francis. ''The Moment of Scrutiny'', New Left Books (1979). * Ortolano, Guy
"F. R. Leavis, Science, and the Abiding Crisis of Modern Civilization"
, ''History of Science'', 43: 161–85 (2005). * Podhoretz, Norman. "F. R. Leavis: A Revaluation", ''The New Criterion'', Vol. 1, September 1982. * Robinson, Ian. "The English Prophets", The Brynmill Press Ltd (2001). * Samson, Anne. ''F. R. Leavis (Modern Cultural Theorists)'', University of Toronto (1992). * Singh, G. (1998). "The Achievement of F.R. Leavis," ''Modern Age'', Vol. 40, No. 4, pp. 397–405. * Storer, Richard. ''F. R Leavis'', Routledge (2010). * Walsh, William. ''F. R. Leavis'', Chatto & Windus (1980).

External links

Works by F. R. Leavis
at

Internet Archive The Internet Archive is an American 501(c)(3) organization, non-profit organization founded in 1996 by Brewster Kahle that runs a digital library website, archive.org. It provides free access to collections of digitized media including web ...

another link

F. R. Leavis in America

The Leavis Society
{{DEFAULTSORT:Leavis, F. R. 1895 births 1978 deaths Academics of the University of Bristol Academics of the University of Wales Academics of the University of York Alumni of Emmanuel College, Cambridge English conscientious objectors English literary critics Fellows of Downing College, Cambridge New Criticism People associated with the Friends' Ambulance Unit People educated at The Perse School Writers from Cambridge Members of the Order of the Companions of Honour