Published to mark the centenary of his birth, this is a biography of F.R. Leavis, who died at the age of 83 on 14th April 1978. Other than his time as a stretcher-bearer in World War I, his life was spent in Cambridge. Through most of his adult life he was only Dr Leavis, and yet he was arguably one of the most influential British academics of all time, and was the guru of many of the most serious literary and theatrical figures to emerge from Cambridge after the war. Leavis himself forbade a biography, and until now his personal papers have been suppressed.