Denys Thompson – författare

F. R. Leavis died in 1978 and his wife Q. D. Leavis in 1981, and with their deaths ended one of the most productive and influential literary partnerships in the language. This volume is a collection of reminiscences by people who knew Queenie Leavis as fellow students at Girton, were early pupils of Frank Raymon Leavis, collaborated in the editing of Scrutiny, or were colleagues or friends later. The collection, which is illustrated, is full of rich and fresh biographical information. Since it covers such a wide span, it brings out the contrast between the young couple at the beginning of their careers, good-looking, hopeful and confident; and the embattled veterans in seemingly endless conflict even with their friends and supporters. It also suggests the mercurial nature of both, since they could seem so widely different to different people, and to the very end both could exert formidable charm. Denys Thompson, who edited this volume, was an early pupil of Leavis's, and collaborated with him on Culture and Environment in the 1930s.

This 1980 anthology contains of some of the finest and most significant writing on English country life from Cobbett through Jefferies, Sturt, hardy, Hudson and Flora Thompson to Thomas Hennell and Adrian Bell. A good many of the selections are taken from books originally published by Cambridge University Press. None of the authors is nostalgic about country life. They all wanted a better future for country people but their primary aim was to describe what they saw. A survey is offered of the peasant civilisation of England, which, despite widespread poverty and hardship, encouraged people to go on living and produced a wealth of folk song and a wide range of craft-work. The authors go on to record the changes brought about by large-scale farming and the concomitant heavy investment in machinery and chemicals. Denys Thompson anticipates the anthology as a reminder of human achievement and potential, and his substantial general and sectional introductions show how the lessons and values of the past can be used to revitalise an industrial civilisation.