The Leavises on Fiction [electronic resource] : An Historic Partnership

Vll Preface to the 1987 Reprint This edition reprints the text of the first edition with corrections, but without revisions. Not that revisions aren't desired or desirable. Since the present study was completed in 1978 and published in 1981, there has been time to ponder and probe further, to sharpen distinctions and underline emphases, but mainly to confirm.Most importantly, with the publication of Q. D. Leavis's CollRcted Essays by Cambridge University Press, Mrs Leavis is getting at last the recognition every major critic deserves. Her achievement is now visibly integrated, substantial, and distinctively her own, so that her husband's generous words about her (see the epigraph to this book) ring truer than ever. For sheer exhilarating intelligence on the art of fiction and the novel (which Lawrence claimed to be "the highest form of subtle interrelatedness that man has discovered") and its genealogy -especially in the English, American, and Anglo-Irish traditions, but also through comparative reference to the French, Russian, and Italian-Q. D. Leavis surely has no superior.The last few years have also seen the publication of two new editions of F. R. Leavis's criticism-The Critic as Anti-Philosopher (Chatto and Wind us, 1982) and Valuation in Criticism and other essays (Cambridge, 1986)-including pieces published for the first time, though not on the novel. For all these posthumous volumes, Professor G. Singh of Queen's University, Belfast, the devoted editor, deserves the gratitude of everyone who cherishes the humanitas that animates and informs real criticism as distinct from the aridly scientific approaches of much contemporary writing on literature.So the task of exploring, valuing, and trying to put things better is ongoing. Hence readers may like to look at the present writer's obituary tribute "Queen of Critics: the Achievement of Q. D. Leavis (1906Leavis ( -1981))" in Navel: a Forum on Fiction (Winter 1983), where, among other things, I recognize that Mrs Leavis ought to be thought of as the co-author of her husband's book The Great Tradition; and also at M. B. Kinch's Q. D. Leavis 1906-1981: an Appreciation (Brynmill, 1981). I also offer a further consideration of F. R. Leavis's criticism Vlll Preface to the 1987 Reprint IX (for instance, noting affinities with Aristotle and Coleridge) in my essay series "Criticism & Creativity" published in Canada in Qpeen's Qynrterly (Spring 1984 through Summer 1985), and shortly to become a book.A further point. Readers who are interested in the new feminist criticism and its welcome recall to literature's human centre, will want to look closely at Q. D. Leavis's achievement and example, and to assess the contribution of the present book both to women's studies and to understanding the symbiotic nature of true criticism and creativity. Front Matter....Pages i-xvi Introduction: the Leavises and Criticism of the Novel....Pages 1-11 Q. D. Leavis: Fiction and the Reading Public and Scrutiny (1932–47)....Pages 12-26 F. R. Leavis and The Great Tradition: George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad....Pages 27-49 Q. D. Leavis and Major Women Novelists....Pages 50-75 F. R. Leavis and D. H. Lawrence....Pages 76-98 The Leavises and Dickens....Pages 99-133 Back Matter....Pages 135-176