Literary History as Cultural History

This chapter begins with the observation that a number of literary critics in this period express the hope that a new form of ‘cultural history’ would provide the basis for an evaluative assessment of the direction of social change. They look to those trained as critics, not to historians, for such an approach, one that tries to identify the ‘quality of living’ in evidence in various periods. The chapter shows how such work played an important part in a wider public’s understanding of history in the years between the 1940s and the 1970s, with the Pelican Guide to English Literature providing a notable illustration. The chapter suggests that the reception of Williams’s unconventional book, The Long Revolution, in 1961 can be seen to mark the end of the style of work considered in the previous chapters.