Q. D. Leavis was one of the finest critics of the novel. Her published essays appeared as articles and reviews of remarkable trenchancy in Scrutiny (of which she was effectively co-editor with her husband F. R. Leavis), or as lectures or as introductions to editions of classic novels. Now, for the first time, they have been collected and reprinted in three volumes. This volume collects her lecture 'The American Novel'; essays and lectures on Henry James, Hawthorne, Melville and Edith Wharton; and the lectures 'The French Novel', 'The Russian Novel' and 'The Italian Novel'. There is an introduction by the editor, Professor G. Singh. All the essays are informed by that broad 'sociological view of literature that caused Q. D. Leavis to ask how the novel rose and why it flourished.
