Valuation in Criticism and Other Essays — F.R. Leavis

This volume is almost certain to be the last collection of F. R. Leavis's essays to include previously unpublished material. It also gathers together essays, reviews, articles, lectures and notes which have not appeared in volume form before, or which are now relatively hard to find. An additional interest is that the contents range from his very first published articles to the things he was engaged in writing immediately before his final illness. This material, from the whole span of a long writing career, shows both the continuity of his preoccupations and important respects in which his judgements changed. In an introductory essay Professor Singh discusses each piece and relates it to the development of Leavis's ideas. The reader can trace his concern for standards of critical valuation as it evolved through studies of T. S. Eliot, D. H. Lawrence, William Empson, George Eliot, Henry James, W. B. Yeats, I. A. Richards and others. Leavis's well-known reflections on Marxism are also included.