[In the following review, Leavis believes that given Orage's powerful influence and literary standing, Selected Essays and Critical Writings of A. R. Orage is disappointing for its lack of originality and critical thinking.]

[Selected Essays and Critical Writings of A. R. Orage] will be opened with some eagerness by those whose acquaintance with the New English Weekly leaves them wondering over the legend of A. R. Orage. They will hope to find some explanation of the influence he is said to have wielded and the enormous impression he appears to have made in distinguished quarters. They will be disappointed. This selection from Orage's writings was, no doubt, undertaken as an act of piety, but it will not help to prolong his reputation. For what it exhibits to us is a mind of no distinction or force of any kind. There is a certain pontifical egotism as of a would-be Arnold Bennett, but Orage has none of the liveliness and vigour that make Books and Persons, Bennett's best journalism, still enjoyable. In fact, he shows here as a very poor journalist, while certainly offering no grounds for being taken seriously as a thinker or critic. He does indeed offer evidence of unusually wide reading (for a journalist), and he accosts with assurance a wide range of topics. But his air of cogency and incisiveness is not even superficially convincing; the effect is lame, limp and dull. He clearly thinks he is thinking, and as clearly doesn't know what thinking is—which, of course, is the almost inevitable result of a journalistic career, however fine the natural endowment the journalist may have started with, and however high the level at which he is supposed to work.

That Orage had some compelling personal quality we are forced, by the nature of his reputation, to conclude. Yet on the evidence of the New English Weekly it is difficult to see why he should have been reputed a brilliant editor, even. Was what followed on that prolonged inaugural fanfare anything but a pitiful flop? One remembers a good contributor or two, but that is all. And it appeared that Orage was ready to encourage the most brassily empty young careerist.

Perhaps you have to be a Social Crediter to appreciate him.