‘»The common pursuit of true judgement»: that is how the critic should see his business and what it should be for him. His perceptions and judgements are his, or they are nothing; but, whether or not he has consciously addressed himself to cooperative labour, they are inevitably collaborative. Collaboration may take the form of disagreement, and one is grateful to the critic whom one has found worth disagreeing with.’

The tone, categorical, uncompromising, and deeply committed to the critic’s task, is wholly and unmistakably Dr Leavis’s, the most controversial critic of our time. In this series of essays he ranges from Shakespeare to Auden, from Bunyan to E. M. Forster. The essays on Shakespeare, Milton, Johnson, Swift, and Pope are particularly important and what he has to say about E. M. Forster, T. S. Eliot, and D. H. Lawrence displays a challenging concern with modern letters.

‘There is some of Dr Leavis’s most mature criticism in this volume’ – Edwin Muir in the Observer

‘What stamps his work as being by a critic of the first rank is the quality of his perception’ – Noel Annan in the Guardian