The Great Tradition by F. R. Leavis. Published in 1948, the work is a controversial survey of English fiction, in which Leavis argues for the moral seriousness of a select few novelists who form a "great tradition". Leavis limits the great English novelists to Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, and Joseph Conrad. He emphasizes the importance of seriousness and moral depth in literature. The book is considered a primary text of twentieth-century literary criticism. Leavis famously dismissed most of Charles Dickens's work, with the exception of Hard Times, for lacking the necessary seriousness.
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