ENGLISH AS A VOCATION: THE SCRUTINY MOVEMENT This page intentionally left blank English as a Vocation: Th e Scrutiny Movement C HRISTOPHER H ILLIARD 1 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © Christopher Hilliard 2012 Th e moral rights of the author have been asserted First Edition published in 2012 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available ISBN 978–0–19–969517–1 Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Group, Bodmin and King’s Lynn For Rose and Tess This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements Being in an archive is, for me, one of the defi ning pleasures of being a historian, and I would like to thank the staff of all the libraries and ar- chives whose holdings I used in researching this book. I am especially indebted to Amanda Goode at Emmanuel College, Cambridge; Kate Perry and Hannah Westfall at Girton College, Cambridge; Patricia McGuire at King’s College, Cambridge; Lynn Manner of the Kenyon College archives; Simon Bailey and Alice Millea of the Oxford University Archives; Verity Andrews at the University of Reading; Jacky Hodgson at the University of Sheffi eld Library; and Rachel Hassall of the Penguin archive at the University of Bristol. Th anks also to Helen Fraser, formerly managing director of Penguin Books, for granting me access to the collec- tion at Bristol. Th e archives most important for this book have been the Downing College archives, and I am very grateful to Kate Th ompson, the current archivist, Sarah Westwood, her predecessor, and David Pratt, Downing’s fellow-archivist. Kate Th ompson went out of her way to help me and my heroic research assistant, Benjamin Dabby. Ben combed through the Downing College matriculation registers, piecing together the data on which Chapter 3 is based. He found sources I hadn’t been aware of, and I am indebted to him for his ideas and curiosity as well as for his diligence. I have since been through these materials and other records of college admissions myself, but I want to make it clear that Ben’s contribution goes well beyond reconnaissance. Most of the time I was writing this book, I depended on the collections of the University of Sydney libraries, and on their interlibrary loan staff . Chris Boyd was so good at getting hold of obscure items that I began to take a mischievous pleasure in requesting ever more unlikely titles—such as the old Doctor Who paperbacks one of F. R. Leavis’s undergraduates had written—which he duly obtained. I thank Jacqueline Baker of Oxford University Press for believing in the project, and Jane Olin-Ammentorp, Ariane Petit, Jess Smith, Rachel Platt, Jenny Townshend, Veeralakshmy Sadayappan, and everyone behind the scenes at OUP who helped turn the manuscript into a book. OUP’s for- midably perceptive readers helped me to think more clearly about the scope of the book and its arguments. Jane Grant, Ross McKibbin, Guy Ortolano, and Selina Todd read chap- ters of the manuscript and improved them dramatically. I really appreciate the learning and insight they brought to bear on those chapters. Th is time viii Acknowledgements I did n ot ask Susan Pedersen and Peter Mandler to read my work before it was published, but their training and their example guide everything I write and their continuing support means a great deal to me. Being able to talk about shared interests with Stefan Collini has been one of the privileges of working on the history of literary criticism. Nancy Walbridge Collins gave me an opportunity to clarify the direction of the project by inviting me to write an overview of it for E uropean Studies Forum . For their suggestions, criticism, and encouragement, I would like to thank Laura Beers, Lawrence Black, Barbara Caine, Marco Duranti, Andrew Fitzmaurice, Margaret Harris, Kitty Hauser, Julia Horne, Chris Joyce, Jon Lawrence, Peter Marks, Tamson Pietsch, Merrilee Robb, Stephen Robertson, Brigid Rooney, Michael Saler, Robert Scoble, Glenda Sluga, Barry Spurr, Shane White, and Ken Worpole. Richard Waterhouse, Judith Barbour, Rob Jackson, Beverley Sherry, Paul Brock, Will Christie, Margaret Sampson, and Sheila Fitzpatrick helped me try to understand the Australian dimension of my subject. M. Wynn Th omas’s refl ections on the history of English at Swansea were enor- mously helpful, and not just about Swansea; I thank Dai Smith for intro- ducing me over email to Professor Th omas. Frank Mort and James Walvin shared their memories of the University of York in the 1960s. Miles Layram not only sent me the paper he and John Roe presented at the 2010 Leavis at York conference, but also provided me with copies of the Leavis corre- spondence now in the University of York library—an act of wonderful scholarly generosity to a stranger. Th e research for this book was generously supported by the University of Sydney and by the Australian Research Council (DP0772403). Th e ARC paid for time away from the classroom, for travel, and for research assistance in Britain and the United States over several years when, for two good reasons (see below), I couldn’t get to the northern hemisphere. I owe an enormous debt to a succession of talented and painstaking re- search assistants. Ben Dabby I’ve already mentioned. Tobias Harper and Philippa Hetherington copied documents from the libraries of Columbia and Harvard respectively. Nathan Braccio went through Stuart Chase’s correspondence in the Library of Congress for me. Peter Allender did marvellous work in the Penguin Archives at the University of Bristol. Th anks too to George Donaldson and Hugh Pemberton for leading me to Peter. In Sydney, Rhiannon Davis and Jennie Taylor have checked quota- tions, hunted down sources, helped with copyright permissions, and more. I value our conversations about mass culture and modern Britain over the past few years. Robin Leavis and Kate Varney granted me access to manuscript mate- rial written by their parents and now held in archives in Cambridge and elsewhere. I owe a special debt to Robin Leavis, not only for giving me Acknowledgements ix permission to quote this material, but for his searching reading of the entire text. I am grateful to Edward Th ompson and Betty Th ompson for permission to quote material by Denys Th ompson, and I appreciate Edward Th ompson’s warm support of the project and the memories of his father he has shared with me. I thank the Ford family for permission to quote from Boris Ford’s unpublished letters, and Tom Holbrook for per- mission to quote letters by David Holbrook. Th e extract from Ronald Bottrall’s poem ‘Th e Future Is Not for Us’ is reproduced with the kind permission of Anthony Bottrall. I thank Helen Forman for allowing me to quote from John Crowe Ransom’s letters. Th e letter from Lionel Trill- ing to John Crowe Ransom of 23 August 1949 is quoted by permission of the estate of Lionel Trilling. (© 2012 Th e Estate of Lionel Trilling. All rights reserved.) Richard Hoggart’s papers are quoted with the permission of Curtis Brown on behalf of Richard Hoggart (copyright © Richard Hoggart). M. C. Bradbrook’s papers are quoted with the permission of Th e Mistress and Fellows, Girton College, Cambridge. I am grateful to David Pratt for permission to quote the Doughty Society minute books in the Downing College archives. Material from the Oxford University archives is quoted with permission of the Keeper of the Archives, Simon Bailey. Quotations from the Penguin archive are reproduced by permis- sion of Penguin Books Ltd, and I thank Mary Fox for her eff orts on my behalf. I would also like to thank David Sutton for providing contact details for a number of rights holders. Sarah Graham has made many specifi c and much appreciated contri- butions to the work of getting the book done, especially at crunch times, but what I really want to thank her for are all the ways, intellectual and emotional, that she actively makes it possible for me to be someone who can think and write. Our daughters, Rose and Tess, were born while I was working on this book. A book like this is not an ideal gift for two special girls, but I hope they will see the dedication as another sign, however small, of my love for them.