D.H. Lawrence: Novelist

by F.R. Leavis

Literary Criticism, Literary Studies

Genres: Literary Criticism, Nonfiction, Biography

Paperback

First published January 1, 1955

About the author

Frank Raymond "F.R." Leavis, CH was an English literary critic of the early-to-mid-twentieth century. He taught for much of his career at Downing College, Cambridge but often latterly at the University of York.

Reviews

[Kris Kipling]

Heroic in that it's the first serious scholarly attempt to clear Lawrence of charges that he was a bad writer and obsessed with sex, interesting in its attention to "minor" Lawrence works (like the novella St Mawr) and in its choice to largely ignore Lawrence's most notorious novel, but... But it's largely an unfortunate waste, this. It's a big, dull, scholarly study of the writer, a Nottinghamshire miner's son, who scorned scholars. Leavis is a dull man, and it's hard to believe he's considered one of the better critics of the 20th century. Oh, he makes a good case. His lengthy excerpts from Lawrence's works show that the man certainly wasn't a bad writer (though he could on occasion be, when he got carried away), that sex was the subject of little of Lawrence's works overall. Leavis talks up the vitality of Lawrence's prose compared to Joyce and Eliot - Lawrence-haters both - but his dry style is better suited to a study of those writers. More forceful commentary on what Lawrence was trying to get at can be found in the author's own many essays, many of which are bold and brilliant: a much better bet than D. H. Lawrence, Novelist.