The criticism of F.R. Leavis has always been notable for its uncompromising association of literature and morality. That association in large part explains his reasons for placing five novelists - five only - within the great tradition of English fiction - Jane Austen, George Eliot, Henry James, Joseph Conrad, and D.H. Lawrence. Here, after an introductory essay on "the great tradition" as a whole, he deals with Eliot, James and Conrad, and in an appendix, with "Hard Times", which he considers the one work of Dickens's that has the strength of "a completely serious work of art".