To most observers the publication in 1935 of Coleridge on Imagination signaled a very important change in I. A. Richards' thinking as a literary critic. At the time, most other men of letters interpreted it as a shift away from "positivism." But what seems more interesting now is that it was also a shift toward a condition of mind that is pretty accurately described by the word "romanticism." It was indeed, as John Crowe Ransom once remarked, a kind of "conversion."

Of course, Richards was never a very good positivist—never a very pure one—and much less a scientist, as the standard protests against the pseudo-psychological machineries in the Principles of Literary Criticism have demonstrated. (p. 47)

[In] the Principles Richards wrote about the value of the arts in terms of their theoretically measurable and practical effect of "organizing" our minds, his theory being that through intelligent experiencing of...