Description
Book SynopsisAcknowledged as a masterpiece of materialist criticism, this book delves into the complex ways economic reality shapes the imagination. Surveying two hundred years of history and English literature – from George Eliot to George Orwell – Williams provides insights into the social and economic forces that have shaped British culture and society. Provocative and revolutionary in its day, this work overturned conventional thinking about the development of a common British mentality.
Trade ReviewHe was the foremost political thinker of his generation in Britain who in his most formidable books,
Culture And Society,
The Long Revolution and
The Country And The Town, redrew the map of our cultural history, and elsewhere made heroic interventions in the main political debates of his time * Guardian *
For those who read English in the '60s, it was common to revere Williams as both a rock of integrity and a pathfinder for new ways of seeing culture, communication, class and democracy * Independent *
Brave, intelligent, and disciplined...a most impressive work -- C. P. Snow
Penetrating, lucid, objective, and also honestly engaged...the best reasoned plea that I have read for a common culture -- Angus Wilson
Brilliantly intelligent...a good critic and also an original thinker -- Stuart Hampshire
