First edition, hardback bound in the cloth with printed titling to spine. 21 × 13.5cm, 266pp.
F. R. Leavis' most controversial book is an uncompromising critical-polemical survey of English fiction. Leavis makes his case for moral seriousness as the necessary criterion for an author's inclusion in any list of the finest novelists. In the course of his argument he adds D. H. Lawrence to the pantheon, and singles out Hard Times as Dickens' one 'completely serious work of art'; while Lawrence Sterne, Henry Fielding, and James Joyce are among those weighed in the balance and found wanting.
A good copy, with some fading to the spine and light bumping to the corners. The pages are clean and the binding holding.