Leavis, F(rank) R(aymond)

English literary critic. With his wife Q(ueenie) D(orothy) Leavis (1906–1981), he cofounded and edited the influential literary review Scrutiny (1932–53). He championed the work of D H Lawrence and James Joyce and in 1962 attacked C P Snow's theory of ‘the two cultures’ (the natural alienation of the arts and sciences in intellectual life). His critical works, introducing a new seriousness to the study of literature, include New Bearings in English Poetry (1932), which placed T S Eliot centrally in the modern poetic tradition, The Great Tradition (1948), and The Common Pursuit (1952).