The Bradbury Circle: The Writer, the Critic, and the University, 1955-2000

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My project is an intellectual history of the creative, critical, and educational work of Malcolm Bradbury, Lorna Sage, David Lodge and the literary journal Critical Quarterly, founded by C. B. Cox and A. E. Dyson in 1958. It brings to light a network of postwar public intellectuals I term the 'Bradbury circle', and investigates how these five individuals combined creative practice with academic literary criticism and university teaching. Alongside their university careers, these figures engaged variously with public-facing magazines, secondary schools, and television in an attempt to cultivate a plural and democratic literary culture, thus opposing the cultural pessimism of F. R. Leavis. By emphasising the importance of the Bradbury circle, who worked creatively and critically within and outside the English departments of British provincial and civic universities, I propose a significant alternative to the Oxbridge-focussed histories of the discipline that foreground a polarised conflict between Leavisism and 'Theory'.