The Mountain in the Sunlight: Studies in Conflict and Unity

Alick West, one of the leading literary critics of the Left, begins by contesting Dr. Leavis’ well known argument that the traditional culture of the English people was destroyed by the industrial revolution. He claims that culture is continuous, and substantiates this claim by his interpretation of the six writers whose work is examined in this book: Bunyan, Defoe, Pater, Wilde, Priestley and Lindsay.