While the champions of the New Criticism were evaluating literature by a close analysis of the text, the British literary critic and Cambridge professor F.R. Leavis searched for evidence of the author’s maturity and sensitivity. Leavis’s writings had a great impact on the study of literature in British Schools. His books, New Bearings in English Poetry (1932) and The Great Tradition: George Eliot, James and Conrad (1948) are considered seminal works. Leavis co-edited the influential journal Scrutiny where many of his most pointed critical essays were published.
