Scrutiny was first issued quarterly from Cambridge between 1932 and 1953, the principal editor throughout being Dr Leavis. It is now recognized as a formative influence on English intellectual and cultural life worthy to rank with the great reviews of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This reissue is of the 1963 combined set, including a final volume containing an important Retrospect by Dr Leavis and a substantial analytical index. Scrutiny offers an almost complete critical history of English literature from Chaucer to the mid-twentieth century. Medieval literature, Shakespeare, the seventeenth-century poets, Pope, Dryden, Johnson, the great romantics, the Victorians, and nearly all the important modern writers are seriously examined. Many of the articles have become classics, and resulted in revisions of previously accepted views. An important feature of Scrutiny, still of great interest, is the book review section, where many of the important books of the time, and some of the pretentious ones too, were reviewed as they appeared.

Table of Contents:
Volume I No. 1: A Manifesto, by The Editors; A Note on Nostalgia; 'The Literary Mind'; Notes on the Style of Mrs. Woolf; On a Grave of the Drowned, a poem; The Political Background; The Development of the Public School; Release, a poem; The Art-Form of Democracy?; Comments and Reviews: A middleman of ideas: the works of Stuart Chase; How high is the higher education? a review of Flexner's Universities; Biology and Mr Huxley: a review of Brave New World; Babbitt buys the world: a review of The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind; Many Psychologies; Felo de Se?; New Bearings in English Poetry; The London Book of English Prose; Philosophy of the Sciences; Volume I No. 2. September, 1932: 'Enlightened' Education; The Chinese Renaissance; The New Bentham; What's Wrong With Criticism?; Eagles and Trumpets for the Middle Classes; Excursion, a poem; Comments and Reviews: The Literary Racket; The Wordsworths and Coleridges; And the novel? i. Four Times and Out? Sartoris; ii. A Serious Artist, the novels of John Dos Passos; iii. 'The Book Society Recommends…'; The Essential Shakespeare; The Orators; Mencius on the Mind; G. K. Chesterton's Chaucer; Reminisces of D. H. Lawrence; Private Pleasure; World-Losers; American Liberals seeking a home; Ethical Relativity; Short Notices; Volume I No. 3. December, 1932: Editorial Note; 'Under Which King, Bezonian?'; Festivals of Fire, Section I; Surrealisme; Two Poems; Marvell's 'Garden'; Advertising God; Will Training Colleges Bear Scrutiny?; From 'Coolstone Park', A Novel; Comments and Reviews: D. H. Lawrence and Professor Irving Babbitt; A Professional Enemy; Dryden Redivivus; News from the Mountain; Proletarian Criticism; The Common Reader, Second Series; 'Lord, what would they say...?'; Music in London; Reading about art; An American lead; Resolute Optimism; Trotsky's History of the Russian Revolution, Vol. I; Industry and Education in Soviet Russia; Eugenics and Evolution; The Moral Judgement of the Child; Short Notices; Notes on contributers; Volume I No. 4. March, 1933: Appeal to Readers; Restatements for Critics; Culture and Leisure; Evaluations (I): I. A. Richards; History of the Marxian Method; Notes on Comedy; English Work in the Public School; Wordsworth and Professor Babbitt; Comments and Reviews; Mr. Punch's political supplements; Training colleges - repercussions; Selected Essays by T. S. Eliot; Form in Modern Poetry; Leviathan Hooked: The Shakespearian Tempest; Oxford Poetry 1932; Wyndham Lewis: A Discursive Exposition; Notes on Literature as a career; More Lawrence; Bentham's Theory of Fictions; Gentleman versus player: Thoughts and Adventures; Scrutiny of Cinema; The Press and the Organization of Society; Snobbery with Violence; Short Notices; Notes on contributors.