First published in 1976, Raymond Williams' highly acclaimed Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society is a collection of lively essays on words that are critical to understanding the modern world. In these essays, Williams, a renowned cultural critic, demonstrates how these key words take on new meanings and how these changes reflect the political bent and values of our past and current society. He chose words both essential and intangible--words like nature, underprivileged, industry, liberal, violence, to name a few--and, by tracing their etymology and evolution, grounds them in a wider political and cultural framework. The result is an illuminating account of the central vocabulary of ideological debate in English in the modern period.

This edition features a new original foreword by Colin MacCabe, Distinguished Professor of English and Literature, University of Pittsburgh, that reflects on the significance of Williams' life and work. Keywords remains as relevant today as it was over thirty years ago, offering a provocative study of our language and an insightful look at the society in which we live.

When railway signalman Harry Price suddenly suffers a stroke, his son Matthew, a lecturer in London, makes a return to the border village of Glynmawr. As Matthew and Harry struggle with their memories of personal and social change, a beautiful and moving portrait of the love between a father and son emerges.

As a brilliant survey of English literature in terms of changing attitudes towards country and city, Williams' highly-acclaimed study reveals the shifting images and associations between these two traditional poles of life throughout the major developmental periods of English culture.

Considered to be the founding father of British cultural theory, Williams was concerned throughout his life to apply a materialist and socialist analysis to all forms of culture, defined generously and inclusively as structures of feeling. In this major work, Williams applies himself to the problem of modernism. Rejecting stereotypes and simplifications, he is especially preoccupied with the ambivalent relationship between revolutionary socialist politics and the artistic avant-garde. Judiciously assessing the strengths and weaknesses of the modernist project, Williams shifts the framework of discussion from merely formal analysis of artistic techniques to one which grounds these cultural expressions in particular social formations. Animating the whole book is the question which Williams poses and brings us significantly closer to answering: namely, what does it mean to develop a cultural analysis that goes beyond the modern and yet avoids the trap of postmodernism's new conformism?

Television: Technology and Cultural Form was first published in 1974, long before the dawn of multi-channel TV, or the reality and celebrity shows that now pack the schedules. Yet Williams' analysis of television's history, its institutions, programmes and practices, and its future prospects, remains remarkably prescient.

Williams stresses the importance of technology in shaping the cultural form of television, while always resisting the determinism of McLuhan's dictum that 'the medium is the message'. If the medium really is the message, Williams asks, what is left for us to do or say? Williams argues that, on the contrary, we as viewers have the power to disturb, disrupt and to distract the otherwise cold logic of history and technology - not just because television is part of the fabric of our daily lives, but because new technologies continue to offer opportunities, momentarily outside the sway of transnational corporations or the grasp of media moguls, for new forms of self and political expression.

This book extends the theme of Raymond Williams's earlier work in literary and cultural analysis. He analyzes previous contributions to a Marxist theory of literature from Marx himself to Lukacs, Althusser, and Goldmann, and develops his own approach by outlining a theory of cultural materialism' which integrates Marxist theories of language with Marxist theories of literature.

Williams moves from a review of the growth of the concepts of literature and idealogy to a redefinition of determinism' and hegemony'. His incisive discussion of the 'social material process' of cultural activity culminates in a re-examination of the problems of alignment and commitment and of the creative practice in individual authors and wider social groups.

A comprehensive introduction to the work of one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century.

Raymond Williams is a towering presence in cultural studies, most importantly as the founder of the apporach that has come to be known as cultural materialism. Yet Williams's method was always open-ended and fluid, and this volume collects together his most significant work from over a twenty-year peiod in which he wrestled with the concepts of materialism and culture and their interrelationship. Aside from his more directly theoretical texts, however, case-studies of theatrical naturalism, the Bloomsbury group, advertising, science fiction, and the Welsh novel are also included as illustrations of the method at work. Finally, Williams's identity as an active socialist, rather than simply an academic, is captured by two unambiguously political pieces on the past, present and future of Marxism.

In the words of Cornel West, Raymond Williams was the last of the great European male revolutionary socialist intellectuals. A figure of international importance in the fields of cultural criticism and social theory, Williams was also preoccupied throughout his life with the meaning and significance of his Welsh identity. Who Speaks for Wales? was the first collection of Raymond Williams's writings on Welsh culture, literature, history, and politics. Published in 2003, it appeared in the early years of Welsh political devolution and offered a historical and theoretical basis for thinking across the divisions of nationalism and socialism in Welsh thought. This new edition, appearing in the centenary of Williams' birth, appears at a very different moment in which, after the Brexit referendum of 2016, Raymond Williams's Welsh-European vision seems to have been soundly rejected and is now a reminder of what might have been. This new edition includes new material and a new afterword. Williams's engagement with questions of nationhood and identity contained in this book spoke to readers from Berlin to New York, Sao Paulo to Tokyo. Daniel G. Williams's new edition further underlines the ways in which Raymond Williams' engagement with Welsh issues makes a significant contribution to contemporary international debates on nationalism, class, and ethnicity. Who Speaks for Wales? remains essential reading for everyone interested in questions of nationhood and identity in Britain and beyond.

Brand new collection of the essential essays from one of the founders of cultural studies, Raymond Williams

Raymond Williams was a pioneering scholar of cultural and society, and one of the outstanding intellectuals of the twentieth century. In this, a collection of difficult to find essays, some of which are published for the first time, Williams emerges as not only one of the great writers of materialist criticism, but also a thoroughly engaged political writer.

Published to coincide with the centenary of his birth and showing the full range of his work, from his early writings on the novel and society, to later work on ecosocialism and the politics of modernism, Politics and Culture shows Williams at both his most accessible and his most penetrating.An essential book for all those interested in the politics of culture in the twentieth century, and the development of Williams's work.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.

We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.

We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.

This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work.

Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface.

We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

During the miners' strike in the 1980s, a worker is killed in the striking coalfields of Wales. Some months later, a government minister thought to be connected with the death is also shot. Lewis Redfern-- once a radical but now a political analyst and journalist-- pursues the sniper, a lonely hunt that leads him through an imbroglio of civil service leaks to a secret organization: a source of insurrection far more powerful than anyone could have suspected known as the Volunteers. In this fast-paced narrative of espionage and intrigue, Redfern, through his obsessive pursuit of justice, finally encounters the truth about himself as the novel discusses the conflict between moral choice and political loyalty.

Collected essays and talks from one of Britain's great thinkers, ranging across political and cultural theory

Raymond Williams possessed unique authority as Britain's foremost cultural theorist and public intellectual. Informed by an unparalleled range of reference and the resources of deep personal experience, his life's work represents a patient, exemplary commitment to the building of a socialist future.

This book brings together important early writings including Culture is Ordinary, The British Left, Welsh Culture and Why Do I Demonstrate? with major essays and talks of the last decade. It includes work on such central themes as the nature of a democratic culture, the value of community, Green socialism, the nuclear threat, and the relation between the state and the arts. Here too, collected for the first time, are the important later political essays which undertake a thorough revaluation of the principles fundamental to the idea of socialist democracy, and confirm Williams as a shrewd and imaginative political theorist. In a sober yet constructive assessment of the possibilities for socialist advance, Williams--in the face of much recent intellectual fashion--powerfully reasserts his lifelong commitment to making hope practical, rather than despair convincing.

This valuable collection confirms Raymond Williams as a thinker of rare versatility and one of the outstanding intellectuals of our century.

Raymond Williams helped to establish the field of cultural sociology with Marxism and Literature and Culture and Society. Continuing the work of those studies, The Sociology of Culture offers debate on the origin and evolution of culture. It defines sociology of culture as a convergence of various fields and explores ways in which culture is socially mediated.

A historical analysis of the social organization of culture in terms of its institutions and formations. Insisting that the term sociology of culture implies a convergence of interests and methods, Williams draws from a broad range of examples: Greek drama, Celtic bards, the Pre-Raphaelites, Bloomsbury and modern copyright laws, among others.--Library Journal

Raymond Williams (1921-87) was professor of drama at Cambridge University. His many books include Marxism and Literature, Keywords, Country and the City, and Culture and Society.

Raymond Williams's work was always concerned with the relation between culture and society. This book focuses on specific texts and authors, exploring the historical and cultural sources of their particular forms of writing. In it, Williams examines dramatic form and language in Racine and Shakespeare; the politics of fiction in the English Jacobin novel; David Hume and Charles Dickens and the changing characteristics of English prose; Robert Tressell, The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, and the role of region and class in the English novel. Also included are Williams's reflections on the rise of English studies, on their crisis as the literary traditions of Cambridge University were beset by the 'structuralist controversy', and on the wider implications of this redefinition of the critical field.

Acknowledged as perhaps the masterpiece of materialist criticism in the English language, this omnibus ranges over British literary history from George Eliot to George Orwell to inquire about the complex ways economic reality shapes the imagination.

Anniversary edition of the classic political manifesto

Urgently relevant to current arguments about the crisis of austerity, the 1968 manifesto set out a new agenda for socialist Britain, after the failure of the postwar consensus. It sought to change the nature of the state, to drive a wedge between finance and empire, to stress the importance of a planned economy for all, and to detach Britain from the imperial goals to which it had long been committed. Today, the spirit of The May Day Manifesto offers a road map to a brighter future.

The original publication brought together the most influential radical voices of the era. Among the seventy signatories were Raymond Williams, E. P. Thompson, Stuart Hall, Iris Murdoch, Terry Eagleton, Ralph Miliband, and R. D. Laing. This edition comes with an introduction from Owen Jones, who brings a sense of urgency and hope to the contemporary debate.

Raymond Williams made a central contribution to the intellectual culture of the Left in the English-speaking world. He was also one of the key figures in the foundation of cultural studies in Britain, which turned critical skills honed on textual analysis to the examination of structures and forms of resistance apparent in everyday life. Politics and Letters is a volume of interviews with Williams, conducted by New Left Review, designed to bring into clear focus the major theoretical and political issues posed by his work. Introduced by writer Geoff Dyer, Politics and Letters ranges across Williams's biographical development, the evolution of his cultural theory and literary criticism, his work on dramatic forms and his fiction, and an exploration of British and international politics.