Acknowledgements.

Part I: Culture Wars (1954-1961):.

Introduction.

1. Culture is Ordinary (1958).

2. Film and The Dramatic Tradition (1954).

3. The Masses (1958).

4. Individuals and Societies (1961):.

Part II: Countering The Canon (1962-71):.

Introduction.

5. Tragedy and Revolution (1966).

6. Literature and Rural Society (1967).

7. Thomas Hardy and The English Novel (1970).

8. Orwell (1971).

Part III: Theory and Representation (1972-80):.

Introduction.

9. Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory (1973).

10. Television and Representation (1974).

11. Language as Sociality (1977).

12. The Writer: Commitment and Alignment (1980).

Part IV: Cultural Materialism in Action (1978-1988):.

Introduction.

13. The Bloomsbury Fraction (1978).

14. Crisis in English Studies (1981).

15. Writing, Speech and The "Classical" (1984).

16. Language and The Avant-Garde (1986).

Works Cited.

Index.

This carefully-structured book presents a survey of the whole body of Williams' work. It provides new readers with the opportunity to explore his ideas in depth while giving existing readers a fresh perspective by viewing his works historically.

Detailed introductions place Williams' work in the broader national and international context of literary and cultural theory. The selections which follow balance the familiar with the unfamiliar, and include extracts from key works such as Culture and Society, The Long Revolution, Modern Tragedy, Orwell, Marxism and Literature and The Politics of Modernism, as well as equally powerful but less known texts like 'Film and the Dramatic Tradition' and seminal essays such as 'Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory' and 'The Bloomsbury Fraction'.

The Raymond Williams Reader is essential reading for all those interested in contemporary literary theory and cultural studies.