AN INTERVIEW WiTH ARNOLD KETTLP 55 Shakespeare in a Changing World (1964) and The Nineteenth Century Novel: Critical Essays and Documents (1972, revised edition 1981), the rest of his output being evident in lectures for the Open University and articles for journals and newspapers. An Introduction to the English Novel Vols. I, II has attained Vv'ide currency all over the anglophone world and accordr'g to Margot Kettle, his wife, it 13s recommended in schools and colleges in Australia. Similarly, it is easily available in most college libraries and bookshops in India. Hutchinson have, moreover, published a cheap edition for students costing ten rupees, which is approximately fifty pence in sterling. In terms of popularity, I would rank it above Leavis'^ The Great Tradition and Walter Alien's The English Novel even though it belongs to the same category, that is, a basic authoritative book on the English novel. The reason for this is that The'Great Tradition is too selective whereas The English Novel is too general. Moreover, The Great Tradition, like Raymond Williams's The English Novel from Dickens to Lawreme is primarily structured on specific authors, while Kettle's book deals more overtly witli specific texts, for example, 'Emily Bronte : Wuther-ing Heights (1847)', 'George Eliot : Middlemarch (1871-72)'. In spite of this prolific output, Kettle has not had that central influence within the British academic world that is attributable to Leavis. One reason could be that unlike Leavis, Kettle did not have a journal that could have been a possible forum for his ideas (it might be argued that he had been on the editorial board of Marxism Today until recently, yet his influence was not of the dominant kind that characterized Leavis's in relation to Scrutiny), Moreover, he was not located at Oxbridge, the traditional centre of British academia but, in provincial universities which perhaps relegated his enterprise to the sidelines. The general assumptions underlying Kettle's critical practice may be broadly defined as liberal humanist, an ideology that is regarded by some as revisionist.2 Since Kettle's approach is eclectic and moderate, it does not command the attention that radical theories are liable to. -Kettle considers himself a teacher first and it was his intention to reach out to as many people as possible and it was thus that he translated his ideological commitment to piactical terms. He consciously avoids using mystifying jargon which he feels, in the manner of Doris Lessing, could result in "a justified reaction against some of the accepted ways of 'treating' literatuie academically."3 Leavis regards education as leading to a refinement in taste and sensibility which would equip the recipients for a 'humane existence' as opposed to a barbaric one. For Kettle, the function of education was to make people aware of the 'new possibilities in their lives' and to make them 'more politically conscious'. Apart from being labelled a left-Leavisite, Kettle is also calkd an orthodox Marxist. Steiner makes a distinction between orthodox Marxists and "para-Marxists', using Michel Crouzet's phrase.4 These distinctions are based on the one hand on Engels's letters to Margaret Harkness (l885,