Introduction: the Leavises and Criticism of the Novel

Abstract

In 1924 F. R. Leavis completed one of the earliest doctoral dissertations for the English School at Cambridge. Entitled ‘The Relationship of Journalism to Literature: Studied in the Rise and Earlier Development of the Press in England’, it deals in effect with the rise of modern prose and includes long sections on Addison, Defoe and Swift, as well as notes on Fielding, Sterne and others. Between 1927 and 1931 Leavis published a number of brief review articles chiefly for the Cambridge Review, and in 1930 two long essays: Mass Civilization and Minority Culture and his first critique of D. H. Lawrence. In 1929 he married Q. D. Leavis, who was then at work on her own dissertation at Cambridge, which she published in 1932 as Fiction and the Reading Public. The dissertations of husband and wife dovetail at many points: for instance, both contain chapters on the growth of a reading public and both are concerned overall with the development of English prose. The year 1932 also saw the birth of Scrutiny, the influential critical quarterly of which the Leavises were the mainstays till it ceased publication in 1953. So began a literary partnership which lasted till Leavis died in 1978 and which produced some of the best-known criticism of the novel.