The British have often denied the very existence of a tradition of English literary theory. George Watson redeems that denial in his latest book, the first study of 20th Century English theory.

The book begins with Yeats, Pound and Eliot, who made England their home. In subsequent chapters, based on personal recollection as well as published sources, it assesses the contribution of I.A. Richards, William Empson, F.R. Leavis, C.S. Lewis, Isaiah Berlin and Wittgenstein, as well as Marxists like E.P. Thompson and Raymond Williams.

English literary theory is a tradition that has suffered in reputation, paradoxically, by the sheer fertility of its invention. In this seminal work the author celebrates that fertility from the first world war down to the death of Iris Murdoch in 1999, showing that England pioneered the academic study of theories of literature years in advance of France or the USA.

Achnowledgements
Preface

1. Never ones for theory?
2. Pound and Yeats
3. Eliot in Cambridge
4. I.A. Richards
5. William Empson
6. F.R. Leavis
7. C.S. Lewis
8. Isaiah Berlin
9. Iris Murdoch
10. E.P. Thompson
11. Raymond Williams
12. Wittgenstein's last word

Index

   Preface » (PDF, 55 KB)
   Chapter 2: Pound and Yeats » (PDF, 108 KB)
   Chapter 8: Isaiah Berlin » (PDF, 79 KB)

George Watson is a Fellow in English at St. John's College, Cambridge. He is the author of The Literary Critics, to which Never Ones for Theory? is a sequel, and general editor of the New Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature.