Leavis, F(rank) R(aymond) (1895–1978)

English literary critic. With his wife Q(ueenie) D(orothy) Leavis (1906–1981), he cofounded and edited the influential literary review Scrutiny (1932–53). He championed the work of D H Lawrence and James Joyce and in 1962 attacked C P Snow's theory of ‘the two cultures’ (the natural alienation of the arts and sciences in intellectual life). His critical works, introducing a new seriousness to the study of literature, include New Bearings in English Poetry (1932), which placed T S Eliot centrally in the modern poetic tradition, The Great Tradition (1948), and The Common Pursuit (1952).

Leavis was born in Cambridge and educated at Perse School and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. He was made a fellow of Downing College, Cambridge, in 1935 and became lecturer in English in 1936.

Though often dogmatic and severe in his judgements, he always stressed that the criticism of literature must be related to the criticism of life and, as a consequence, the moral stance of an author becomes crucial in assessing his or her work. Much of his later work, often based on essays first published in Scrutiny, concentrates on novels and novelists; it includes Anna Karenina and Other Essays (1967), Dickens the Novelist (1970), Nor Shall My Sword (1972), and The Living Principle (1975). Mass Civilization and Minority Culture (1930) was a controversial polemic on literary culture and education.