Q. D. Leavis
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Q. D. ('Queenie') Leavis (1906-1981), nee Roth, was an English literary critic and essayist.
She wrote about the historical sociology of reading and the development of the English, the European, and the American novel. In her penetrating and lucid criticism she paid particular attention to the writings of Jane Austen, George Eliot, Herman Melville, the Brontes, Edith Wharton and Charles Dickens.
Much of her work was published collaboratively with her husband, F. R. Leavis. She contributed to and supported as an editor Scrutiny (1932-1951), an influential journal that claimed to promote a stringent and morally serious approach to literary criticism.
Her collected essays which include some previously unpublished writings are available in three volumes.
The mathematician Leopold Roth was her brother.
Partial list of works
- Fiction and the Reading Public (1932)
- Lectures in America (1969, with F R Leavis)
- Dickens, the Novelist (1970, with F R Leavis)
- Collected Essays, Volume 1: The Englishness of the English Novel (1983)
- Collected Essays,Volume 2: The American Novel and Reflections on the European Novel (1985)
- Collected Essays, Volume 3: The Novel of Religious Controversy, (1989)
Further reading
- P.J.M. Robertson (1981) The Leavises on Fiction: An Historic Partnership (London)
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