Raymond Williams (1921-1988) was the most influential socialist writer
and thinker in post-war Britain. From 1961, with the publication of The
Long Revolution, his reputation was bound up with the theory and
practice of Culture, as itself a social dynamic. However, Williams
always considered that his critical and imaginative work formed an
integral whole and that their complementary pattern was crucial to his
personal intent and wider purpose. In particular, for him the appearance
of the pathbreaking Culture and Society in 1958 and of his revelatory
first novel Border Country in 1960 were twinned events. Now, for the
first time, making full use of Williams' private and unpublished papers
and by placing him in a wide social and cultural landscape, Dai Smith,
in this highly original and riveting biographical study, uncovers how
the life to 1961 is indeed an explanation of Raymond Williams' immense
and connected creative and intellectual achievement.
