I.A. Richards

The most influential of the first generation of academic literary theorists making their names in the early decades of the century, I. A. Richards is also the least typical and perhaps the most misrepresented in contemporary understanding. Association with New Criticism, a link which Richards himself found uncomfortable, has obscured his psychological and linguistic radicalism, leaving many readers of his works, such as the immensely successful Practical Criticism (1929), with the impression that he is the Head Master of a now superseded school of academic criticism. This definitive collection of Richards' writing between 1919 and 1938 will enable readers to discover for themselves that Richards' position was from very early on distinct from the emerging consensus in university literary education, and that while his works have been consistently invoked as the legitimating forerunner of an institutionalized classroom method, he is better seen as one of its severest critics. makes available rare volumes, many of which are now unobtainable included are all Richards' major journal publications a representative selection of contemporary writings about Richards.