F. R. Leavis
British literary critic (1895–1978)
Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis ( LEE-vis; 14 July 1895 – 14 April 1978) was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge, and later at the University of York.
Leavis ranked among the most prominent English-language critics in the 1950s and 1960s. J. B. Bamborough wrote of him in 1963: "it would be true to say that in the last thirty or more years hardly anyone seriously concerned with the study of English literature has not been influenced by him in some way."
Early life and education
Leavis was born in Cambridge in 1895 to Harry Leavis (1862–1921) and Kate Sarah Moore (1874–1929). His father was a cultured man who ran a shop in Cambridge that sold pianos and other musical instruments, and his son was to retain a respect for him throughout his life. Leavis was educated at the Perse School in Cambridge (in English terms a public school). The headmaster W. H. D. Rouse was a classicist known for his "direct method" which required teachers to carry on classroom conversations with their pupils in Latin and classical Greek. Though he had some fluency in foreign languages, Leavis felt that his native language was the only one on which he was able to speak with authority. His extensive reading in the classical languages is not therefore strongly evident in his work.
Leavis had won a scholarship from the Perse School to Emmanuel College, Cambridge, to study history.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 18, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2428288. VIAF identifies the subject as 108224907. The Library of Congress control number is n80016972. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1895, 1978, 1963 and 1862.
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This entry incorporates text from “F. R. Leavis” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.