Raymond Williams was the founder of an approach that was to become known as cultural materialism. Yet, Williams's method was always open-ended and fluid, and this volume collects toegther his most significant work from over a 25-year period in which he wrestled with the concepts of materialism and culture and their interrelationship. Aside from his more directly theoretical texts, however, case-studies of theatrical naturalism, the Bloomsbury Group, advertising, science fiction, and the Welsh novel are also included as illlustrations of the method at work. Finally, Williams's identity as an active socialist, rather than simply an academic, is captured by two unambiguously political pieces on the past, present and future of Marxism.