Culture and Society is a book published in 1958 by Welsh progressive writer Raymond Williams, exploring how the notion of culture developed in Great Britain, from the eighteenth through the twentieth centuries.
 First American edition (1960) publ. Columbia University Press | |
| Author | Raymond Williams |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Genre | Cultural studies |
| Publisher | Chatto and Windus |
Publication date | 1958 |
| Media type | Print (book) |
| ISBN | 0-7012-0792-2 |
| OCLC | 16466015 |
When first published, the book was regarded as having overturned conventional social and historical thinking about culture. It argues that the notion of culture developed in response to the Industrial Revolution and the social and political changes it brought in its wake. This is done through a series of studies of famous British writers and essayists, beginning with Edmund Burke and William Cobbett, also looking at William Blake, William Wordsworth, etc., and continuing as far as F. R. Leavis, George Orwell and Christopher Caudwell.
The book is still in print, in several editions. It has also been translated into many languages.
Further reading
By Williams
- Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society (Croom Helm, 1976). Originally intended as an appendix to Culture and Society.
About Williams
- Milligan, Don (2007). Raymond Williams: Hope and Defeat in the Struggle for Socialism. Studies in Anti-Capitalism. E-book.
- Mulhern, Francis (January–February 2009). "Culture and Society, Then and Now". New Left Review. New Left Review. II (55).