Letter

CLAIRE TOMALIN is too gloomy when she describes Shelley as 'virtually banished' from academic reading lists (Sunday Review, 26 July). I can't agree with her demonising of Leavis either: he always acknowledged that Shelley was a genius; his destructive work had its positive side, and was directed against the very Shelley that she deplores, Palgrave's beautiful angel of cloudy sorrows.

Nora Crook, Cambridge