THE LITERARY CRITIC AND THE VILLAGE LABOURER: ‘CULTURE’ IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY BRITAIN

Abstract

Debates about the concept of ‘culture’ in Britain are usually related to the perceived rise of ‘mass society’ in the early decades of the twentieth century. This essay re-situates such debates in relation to the development, from the 1870s onwards, of an ethically driven interpretation of changes in English society in the late eighteenth century. Through an examination of the later work of the Hammonds and of its reception in the late 1940s and early 1950s, this essay brings out how Raymond Williams's enormously influentialCulture and Societyties the understanding of the concept of ‘culture’ to the emergence of this ‘new civilisation’.