I. A. Richards’s Principles of Literary Criticism (1924) is a foundational work of modern criticism. Richards sought to put the analysis of literature on a firmer footing, drawing on psychology to examine how poetry communicates, how value is judged, and what happens in the mind of a reader.
Influential on the New Criticism and on the study of language and meaning, the book treats words and their effects with new precision. Richards’s attention to the workings of communication helped shape twentieth-century thinking about literature and language alike. It remains a landmark for anyone interested in how texts produce their effects and how we appraise them.