John Middleton Murry remains an intriguing and enigmatic literary figure. His forty or so books range in subject matter from literary theory to politics and religion to engaging discussions of such writers as William Blake, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and John Keats. As a reviewer for British periodicals, he wrote scores of discerning reviews and in many of them recognized works that were to become twentieth-century classics. As an editor of influential journals, he served for a time as an important spokesman for the modernist movement. His approach to literature has been described both as a precursor to the New Criticism and an embodiment of moral vision. During his lifetime his writing was read throughout the English-speaking world, and some of it was translated into various languages. On the other hand, Murry and his work--the two being inseparable according to his detractors--have been denigrated. He has been called an opportunist...