F. R. Leavis: The Gnome of Cambridge

This is the text of the original handwritten notes taken down by the late Professor Roy Holland in the course of attending the tutorials given by F.R. Leavis, while he was a student at Cambridge University studying for the English Tripos examinations (1954-1957). These notes comprise a rich vein of ore, of gems, or nuggets, for the scholar to pick up at will. Roy Holland attended Leavis's tutorials for about three days a week. They were held in groups in his rooms in Downing College. Leavis's divagations on Shakespeare and many (often startling!) observations on writers like Wordsworth and Arnold are here to be picked up by the scholar or literary researcher-from these verbatim, hitherto unpublished comments of a man who many see as the founder of modern literary criticism.