Raymond Williams

Works

• 1958Culture and Society 1780–1950

  From Burke and Cobbett through Mill, Carlyle, Arnold, Ruskin and Morris to Lawrence, T. S. Eliot, Leavis and Orwell: how the idea of culture became a court of appeal against industrial society, as culture, industry, democracy, class and art changed meaning.

• 1977Marxism and Literature

  Reworks Marxist cultural theory: base and superstructure become aspects of one material social process, Gramsci’s hegemony a lived system of meanings and values, challenged by residual and emergent forms and registered in “structures of feeling”; Williams calls the position “cultural materialism”.

Position

Williams is on the map as a founder of cultural studies and as a Marxist theorist of culture. “Culture and Society 1780–1950” (1958) traced how the words industry, democracy, class, art and culture changed their meaning in response to the industrial revolution, from Burke and Cobbett to Leavis and Orwell, and argued for a “common culture” built on the working-class idea of solidarity. “The Long Revolution” (1961) defined culture as a whole way of life and developed the “structure of feeling” as a term for the lived experience of a period. “Keywords” (1976) traced the history of the words in which modern society understands itself. In “Marxism and Literature” (1977) he reworked Marx’s base and superstructure and Gramsci’s hegemony into a “cultural materialism” that treats culture as material production within society and distinguishes dominant, residual and emergent forms. Stuart Hall counted “Culture and Society” and “The Long Revolution” among the founding texts of cultural studies; Edward Said built on “The Country and the City” (1973) while noting how little it says about empire. Williams also wrote on drama, television and Wales and belonged to the New Left. Critics have questioned his focus on England and his idea of rooted communities; these objections are set out under “Context & critique”.

Life & context

Raymond Henry Williams was born on 31 August 1921 in Pandy, near Abergavenny on the Welsh border; his father was a railway signalman and secretary of the local Labour Party. From King Henry VIII Grammar School in Abergavenny he won a state scholarship to read English at Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1939, and joined the Communist Party there, a membership that later lapsed. From 1941 he served in the army and fought as an anti-tank officer in Normandy in 1944. After graduating in 1946 he taught adult education classes for the Oxford University Extra-Mural Delegacy and the Workers’ Educational Association in East Sussex until 1961 and co-founded the review Politics and Letters. In 1961 he became a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, and from 1974 to 1983 he was the university’s first Professor of Drama. Besides criticism he wrote novels, beginning with Border Country (1960). He died in Saffron Walden on 26 January 1988.

Further main works

• Border Country (1960)
• The Long Revolution (1961)
• The Country and the City (1973)
• Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (1976)