F. R. Leavis

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F. R. Leavis CH
F. R. Leavis pictured in his Friends' Ambulance Unit uniform, 1915.
Born	Frank Raymond Leavis (1895-07-14)14 July 1895 Cambridge, England
Died	14 April 1978(1978-04-14) (aged 82) Cambridge, England
Known for	New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) The Great Tradition (1948) The Common Pursuit (1952) Two Cultures? The Significance of C. P. Snow (lecture; 1962)
Spouse	Queenie Leavis ​ (m. 1929)​
Children	3
Academic background
Alma mater	Emmanuel College, Cambridge
Thesis	The Relationship of Journalism to Literature (1924)
Influences	Matthew Arnold Henry James D. H. Lawrence T. S. Eliot I. A. Richards
Academic work
Institutions	Downing College, Cambridge University of York
Influenced	David Holbrook Arnold Kettle Wilfrid Mellers Raymond Williams Norman Podhoretz Howard Jacobson

Frank Raymond "F. R." Leavis CH (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.^[1] 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."^[2]

According to Clive James, "You became accustomed to seeing him walk briskly along Trinity Street, gown blown out horizontal in his slipstream. He looked as if walking briskly was something he had practised in a wind-tunnel."^[3]