Raymond Williams - Life, Publications, Biographical and critical studies

Social historian, critic, and novelist, born in Pandy, Monmouthshire, SE Wales, UK. He studied at Cambridge, where he became a fellow in 1961, and professor of drama (1974–83). He wrote Culture and Society (1958), which established his reputation as a cultural historian, followed by The Long Revolution (1961) and Marxism and Literature (1977), amongst others. He was active in New Left intellectual movements, producing the May Day Manifesto (1968), and was increasingly identified with Welsh nationalism in his novels such as Border Country (1960), The Fight for Manod (1979), and Loyalties (1985).

Raymond Williams (31 August 1921 - 26 January 1988) was a Welsh academic, novelist and critic. He was an influential figure within the New Left and in wider culture. Some 750,000 copies of his books have sold in UK editions alone (Politics and Letters, 1979) and there are many translations of his various work.

Life

Born in Llanfihangel Crucorney, Wales, the son of a railway worker in a village where all of the railwaymen voted Labour while the local small farmers mostly voted Liberal. He also mentions the Italian invasion of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) and Edgar Snow's Red Star Over China, originally published in Britain by the Left Book Club (Politics and Letters).

At this time he was supporter of the League of Nations, attending a League-organised youth conference in Geneva.

World War Two

He went to Trinity College, Cambridge, but his education was interrupted by his war service. At the time, the British government was keen to join in the war against the Soviet Union, while still being at war with Nazi Germany.

In the winter of 1940, he decided that he should join the British Army.

At the time he joined the army, it was normal for undergraduates to be directed into the signal corps.

He was part of the fighting from Normandy through to Germany, where he was involved with the liberation of one of the smaller concentration camps, which was then used to detain SS officers.

Adult education

He received his M.A.

Cambridge University

On the strength of his books, he was invited to return to Cambridge in 1961, eventually becoming Professor of Drama there (1974 - 1983).

Last years

He retired from Cambridge in 1983 and spent his last years in Saffron Walden. He was also working on People of the Black Mountains, a number of short stories about people who lived or might have lived around the Black Mountains, the part of Wales he came from.

Publications

Novels

Border Country, London, Chatto and Windus, 1960. reissued Hogarth Press, 1987. Second Generation, London, Chatto and Windus, 1964. reissued Hogarth Press, 1987. The Volunteers, London, Eyre-Methuen, 1978. Paperback edition, London, Hogath Press, 1985 The Fight for Manod, London, Chatto and Windus, 1979. reissued Hogarth Press, 1987. Loyalties, London, Chatto and Windus, 1985 People of the Black Mountains, Volume 1: The Beginning, London, Chatto and Windus, 1989 People of the Black Mountains, Volume 2: The Eggs of the Eagle, London, Chatto and Windus, 1990

Literary and cultural studies

Reading and Criticism, Man and Society Series, London, Frederick Muller, 1950. Drama from Ibsen to Eliot, London, Chatto and Windus, 1952. Revised edition, London, Chatto and Windus, 1968. Raymond Williams and Michael Orrom, Preface to Film, London, Film Drama, 1954. Culture and Society, London, Chatto and Windus, 1958. New edition with a new introduction, New York, Columbia University Press, 1963. The Long Revolution, London, Chatto and Windus, 1961. Communications, Britain in the Sixties Series, Harmondsworth, Penguin Special, Baltimore, Penguin, 1962: revised edition, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1966. Third edition, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976. Modern Tragedy, London, Chatto and Windus, 1966. New edition, without play Koba and with new Afterword, London, Verso, 1979. Williams and E. Thompson (eds.) New Left May Day Manifesto. London, May Day Manifesto Committee, 1967. Williams (ed.) May Day Manifesto, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1968, 2nd edition. Drama in Performance (book by Raymond Williams), revised edition. New Thinkers Library, C. Watts, 1954 Drama from Ibsen to Brecht, London, Chatto and Windus, 1968. Reprinted, London, Hogarth Press, 1987. The Pelican Book of English Prose, Volume 2:From 1780 to the Present Day, R. Williams, (ed.) Harmondsworth and Baltimore, Penguin, 1969 The English Novel From Dickens to Lawrence, London Chatto and Windus, 1970. Reprinted, London, Hogarth Press, 1985 Orwell, Fontana Modern Masters Series, Glasgow, Collins, 1971. Glasgow, Collins, Flamingo Paperback Editions, Glasgow, Collins, 1984. The Country and the City, London, Chatto and Windus, 1973. Reprinted, London, Hogarth Press, 1985. Williams and R. Williams (eds) D H Lawrence on Education, Harmondsworth, Penguin Education, 1973. Williams (ed.) George Orwell: A Collection of Critical Essays, Twentieth Century Views, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1974. Television: Technology and Cultural form, Technosphere Series, London, Collins, 1974. Keywords, Fontana Communications Series, London, Collins, 1976. New edition, New York, Oxford University Press, 1984. Williams (eds) English Drama: Forms and Developments, Essays in Honour of Muriel Clara Bradbrook, with an introduction by R. Williams, Cambridge and New York, Cambridge University Press, 1977. Marxism and Literature, Marxist Introductions Series, London and New York, Oxford University Press, 1977. Politics and Letters: Interviews with New Left Review, London, New Left Books, 1979, Verso paperback edition, 1981. Problems in Materialism and Culture: Selected Essays, London, Verso, I980. New York, Schocken, 1981. Culture, Fontana New Sociology Series, Glasgow, Collins, 1981. US edition, The Sociology of Culture, New York, Schocken, 1982. Williams (eds) Contact: Human Communication and its History, London and New York, Thames and Hudson, 1981. Cobbett), Past Masters series, Oxford and New York, Oxford University Press, 1983. Towards 2000, London, Chatto and Windus, 1983. US edition, The Sociology of Culture, with a Preface to the American edition, New York, Pantheon, 1984. Writing in Society , London, Verso, 1983. New York, Verso, 1984 M. Williams and R. Williams (eds) John Clare: Selected Poetry and Prose, Methuen English Texts, London and New York, Methuen, 1986. Raymond Williams on Television: Selected Writings, Preface by R. Williams, A. O'Connor, (ed.) London, Routledge, 1989. Gable (ed.) London and New York, Verso, 1989. What I Came to Say, London, Hutchinson-Radius, 1989. Pinkney (ed.) London and New York, Verso, 1989. Wyatt (ed.) London, Collins, 1941 Sugar, in R. Williams, M. Craig (eds) Outlook: a Selection of Cambridge Writings, Cambridge, 1941, pp.7-14. Lehmann (ed.) London, Collins, 1943, pp. Wyatt (ed.) London, 1948.

Drama

Koba (1966) in Modern Tragedy, London, Chatto and Windus A Letter from the Country, BBC Television, April 1966, Stand, 12(1971), pp17-34 Public Enquiry, BBC Television, 15 March 1967, Stand, 9 (1967), pp15-53

Introductions

A seven-page introduction to All Things Betray Thee, a novel by Gwyn Thomas.

Biographical and critical studies

Book length treatments

Cevasco, Maria Elisa. Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1989. Raymond Williams: Making Connections. New York: Routledge, 1994. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. "Raymond Williams's Sociology of Culture: A Critical Reconstruction". London: Palgrave, 2004. Raymond Williams: Film, TV, Culture, London: British Film Institute, 1989. Raymond Williams: Writing, Culture, Politics. Oxford and New York: Blackwell, 1989. Politics and Letters (London, New Left Books, 1979) gives the author's own account of his life and work Stevenson, Nick. Culture, Ideology, and Socialism: Raymond Williams and E.P. Raymond Williams in the Writers of Wales series. University of Wales Press, 1981. History in the Making: Raymond Williams, Edward Thompson and Radical Intellectuals 1936-1956, Merlin Press 2001.