Leavis << LEE vihs >>, F. R. (1895-1978), was one of the most important English literary critics of the 1900’s. His ideas about the relation between literature and society strongly influenced the study of English literature.
Leavis emphasized literature’s involvement with the society out of which it grew. He argued that literature not only was a product of but also helped to produce the culture of its time. With his wife, Queenie Roth Leavis, he was a founder of Scrutiny, a critical journal devoted to preserving the best values of British culture through social analyses of modern and earlier literature. Leavis was the main editor of Scrutiny from 1932 to 1953.
In his early books, Leavis favored poets with a “plain” style, such as Geoffrey Chaucer and William Wordsworth. He attacked established “greats,” such as Edmund Spenser and John Milton. These views appear in New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) and Revaluation (1936). In his later writings, Leavis examined the novel to establish a list of authors who combine great seriousness with an involvement in their society. He favored such writers as Jane Austen, Emily Brontë, Joseph Conrad, George Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence. Leavis’s later books include The Great Tradition (1948) and D. H. Lawrence: Novelist (1955).
Frank Raymond Leavis was born on July 14, 1895, in Cambridge. He taught at Cambridge University from 1925 to 1964. Leavis died on April 14, 1978.
