T HE portion of John Middleton Murry's work which is
itself of the most literary value and is the most likely
to appeal to posterity is his literary criticism. If, as I
think, its importance has been somewhat underestimated
during his life, it is because the prominence he attained as a
literary personality was largely the result of his work in
other and more widely controversial fields. As the editor of
several periodical journals at successive periods of his life,
he was involved in contemporary social and political
argument; he wrote books about pacifism, communism,
religion and theology. His autobiography, and the auto-
biographical element in other books that he wrote, drew
attention to his personal life and moral strivings to an
extent that is not expected of a literary critic, and, in his own
days, alienated rather than attracted sympathy with his
earnest, almost prophetic conception of his literary vocation.
In his output and in the public reaction to it there was much
that tended to divert attention from those works of his
which will have the most enduring claim upon students
of English letters.

Middleton Murry was a literary critic by propensity and
by profession. Such was his own conception of his calling,
and the destiny predicted for him by D. H. Lawrence in the
early days of their intimacy. He was one of those writers,
never very numerous, who are able to re-interpret the
literary heritage and re-affirm its values, not in academic
seclusion but in the dust and confusion of the journalistic
arena, sensitive to the aspirations of the present and in
conflict with its evils. They study the works of genius
in order to make them relevant anew to the questions of
current discourse, not only to vindicate criteria of literary
expression. The critic with such a vocation needs a liberal
education in history as well as in letters. In the cultural,

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