Border Country: Raymond Williams in Adult Education

Raymond Williams (1921-88) was one of post-war Britain's most influential and prolific thinkers. From 1946-61 Williams worked as a teacher in university adult education, and in these years he produced such seminal works as Culture and Society (1958) and The Long Revolution (1961). This volume brings together an extensive and varied collection of Williams's writing from this neglected period, most of it unavailable for decades. The essays document the evolution of Williams's thinking from Politics and Letters in the 1940s to the publication of The Long revolution. The editors provide background essays which constitute a detailed and sympathetic introduction to the work of the younger Williams. Border Country: Raymond Williams in adult education is an intriguing study of the making of an intellectual, and reveals Williams's searching analysis of the conditions for a genuine learning society. It will be of interest to students of literature, cultural studies, sociology, politics, as well as education.

Table of Contents:
Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction; Section One The Unknown Raymond Williams; John McIlroy; Section Two Cultural Politics; For continuity in change; Culture and crisis; The reading public and the critical reader; Soviet literary controversy in retrospect; The state and popular culture; The idea of culture; The new party line?; A kind of Gresham's Law; Culture is ordinary; Our debt to Dr Leavis; Fiction and the writing public; Working class attitudes; The press and popular education; London letter: the new British left; Section Three Teaching and Learning; Some notes on aim and method in university tutorial classes; A note on Mr Hoggart's Appendices; Some experiments in literature teaching; Extracts from Reading and Criticism; i) The way we read now; ii) Critics and criticism; Literature in relation to history: 1870-75; Books for teaching culture and environment; The teaching of public expression; Film as a tutorial subject; Drama from Ibsen to Eliot; i) Review by JR Williams; ii) Reply by Raymond Williams; Text and Context; Section Four Adult Education; Figures and shadows; Standards; Class and classes; Going on learning; An open letter to WEA tutors; The common good; Reflections on adult learning; i) Roots of education; ii) Sensible people; iii) Workers' colleges; iv) Voices of Socialism: RH Tawney; v) Different sides of the wall; vi) Open teaching; Adult education; Adult education and social change; Section Five Retrospect and Prospect; John McIlroy Border Country: Raymond Williams in adult education; Sallie Westwood Excavating the future: towards 2000; Index