ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the development of Revaluation from the lectures which F. R. Leavis gave in 1932 to the finished book, since the context in which the book was originally published, that is, the journal Scrutiny, is what gives the style its peculiar inflection. Rene Wellek was evidently unaware of these lectures, which are mentioned by Ian MacKillop in his biography of Leavis: he started 1932 with a set of lectures on quite new material, a survey of English poetry from the metaphysical poets of the seventeenth century up to John Keats. In publishing the original versions of the chapters of Revaluation in Scrutiny Leavis did not describe them as parts of a work in progress. One correction that Leavis does not make confirms the importance for him of Revaluation's carrying over into the book the spontaneity, contemporaneity and urgency of Scrutiny. Drama in the book derives largely from its being made up of pieces written for the journal.
