3 Review(s)

Dr Leavis's Selection from Scrutiny gives in two volumes important material which is not easily available elsewhere. Though many well-known books have already been derived from Scrutiny, these two volumes do not duplicate material in those books, and they give a great deal of otherwise uncollected material by Dr & Mrs Leavis themselves. The selection concentrates on English literature and literary criticism, and also reflects Scrutiny's success, from the 1930s to the 1950s, in commenting on the important writers of the time. Volume I begins with a collection of studies by Mrs Q. D. Leavis on academic traditions. There follows a section of studies of T. S. Eliot, Yeats, Pound, and more recent poets. Two sections on 'Literary Culture' and 'The Literary World' comment on minor writers and on literary life and institutions (including Dr Leavis's celebrated 'Keynes, Spender and Currency Values').