Resources

Dix, Hywel Rowland, After Raymond Williams: Cultural Materialism and the Break-Up of Britain (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2008).

Dworkin, Dennis L., and Leslie G. Roman, eds., Views Beyond the Border Country: Raymond Williams and Cultural Politics (London: Routledge, 1993).

Eagleton, Terry, ed., Raymond Williams: Critical Perspectives (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1989).

Eldridge, John and Lizzie Eldridge, Raymond Williams: Making Connections (London: Routledge, 1994).

Fuchs, Christian, ‘Raymond Williams’ Communicative Materialism’ in European Journal of Cultural Studies 20.6 (2017), pp.744-762 <DOI:10.1177/1367549417732998>.

Higgins, John, Raymond Williams: Literature, Marxism and Cultural Materialism (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999).

Inglis, Fred, Raymond Williams (London: Routledge, 1995).

McGuigan, Jim, Raymond Williams: Cultural Analyst (Bristol: Intellect, 2019).

O’Connor, Alan, Raymond Williams (Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers Inc, 2006).

Pinkney, Tony, Raymond Williams (Bridgend: Seren Books, 1995).

Prendergast, Christopher, ed., Cultural Materialism: On Raymond Williams (London: University of Minnesota Press, 1995).

Seidl, Monika, Roman Horack and Lawrence Grossberg, eds., About Raymond Williams (London: Routledge, 2010).

Smith, Dai, Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale (Cardigan: Parthian Books, 2008).

Stasi, Paul, ed., Raymond Williams at 100 (London: Rowman & Littlefield, 2021).

Wallace, Jeff, Rod Jones and Sophie Nield, eds., Raymond Williams Now: Knowledge, Limits and the Future (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1997).

Williams, Daniel G., ‘To Know the Divisions: The Identity of Raymond Williams’ in Wales Unchained: Literature, Politics and Identity in the American Century (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2015), pp.93-111.

Visit the Raymond Williams Foundation website

Visit the Raymond Williams Society website

Visit the Raymond Williams Society YouTube channel

Visit the 'Raymond Williams and Keywords' (University of Pittsburgh) website

Raymond Williams Collection, Richard Burton Archives

Raymond Williams Papers, National Library of Wales

The Raymond Williams papers were deposited at the Richard Burton Archives, Swansea University, by Professor Dai Smith following his appointment as a Research Chair in the Centre for Research into the English literature and Language of Wales (CREW) in 2005. CREW, under the directorship of Professors M. Wynn Thomas, Kirsti Bohata and Daniel G. Williams, has been a centre of activity relating to Williams's writings. Dai Smith published his biography Raymond Williams: A Warrior's Tale (Cardigan: Parthian) in 2008 and, as editor of the Welsh Government-funded Library of Wales, reinforced that volume's emphasis on the centrality of fiction in Williams's life and work by bringing the novels Border Country and The Volunteers back into print. Several volumes in the University of Wales Press CREW series 'Writing Wales in English' (by Stephen Knight, Hywel Dix and Daniel G. Williams) have offered new readings of Williams’s thought and writings. Two doctoral theses on Williams have been completed in recent years by Clare Davies and Daniel Gerke, while other PhD students at CREW have drawn on Raymond Williams’s writings in strikingly original ways, particularly Charlotte Jackson, Kieron Smith and Liza Penn-Thomas. The range of publications generated by work in the archive - from Dana Polan's 'Raymond Williams on Film' (Cinema Journal 52:3, Spring 2013) to Stefan Collini's reconstruction of Williams's 'nostalgic imagination' (The Nostalgic Imagination, 2019) - has been a continual source of inspiration. This work has benefitted from the expertise of the archivists at Swansea University’s Richard Burton Archives, especially Katrina Legg - expert cataloguer of the Raymond Williams papers, and dedicated tracker of stray references.

A new edition of Daniel G. Williams’s collection of Welsh essays Who Speaks for Wales: Nation, Culture, Identity has appeared in 2021. It was launched virtually at the Hay Festival in the company of Michael Sheen and Leanne Wood. Since the first appearance of this volume in 2003, interest in Williams's Welshness and the role that it played in his social and cultural thought has been manifested in conferences from Berlin (Harald Pittel and Michael Krause) to Poznan (Karolina Rosiak), from Regensburg (Peter Waller) to Campinas (Alexandro Henrique Paixão and Anderson Ricardo Trevisan).

The Raymond Williams papers have attracted many international scholars to Swansea, with Mingying Zhou (Lingnan University, Hong Kong), Carla Baute (Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil) and Ugo Rivetti (University of Sao Paulo, Brazil) staying for extended periods of research. The most significant and long-standing collaboration has been that between CREW and the Raymond Williams Kenkyu in Japan resulting in conferences in Swansea, Pandy and Newtown (in Wales), and Tokyo, Osaka and Nogata (in Japan). These events have resulted in a series of publications including a special issue of Keywords (Vol. 9, 2011), several issues of the journal Raymond Williams Kenkyu (2010 - 2018), and two collected editions of Williams's writings in Japanese with space given to his writings on Wales (Culture is Ordinary and Other Essays (2013) and The Tenses of the Imagination and Other Essays (2016)). Shintaro Kono and Takashi Onuki initiated the connection with their visit of 2009 (followed up by a year spent by both as Richard Burton Centre International Fellows at Swansea University from 2015-16). The Centenary symposia on ‘Raymond Williams in an Age of Globalization’ build on these connections and collaborations.

The Raymond Williams Collection has been extensively used by researchers from the UK as well as from across the globe, with people travelling from Japan, Brazil, China and the United States of America to consult the papers and the Archives is always keen to welcome old and new readers alike. The Collection forms part of the Welsh Writers in English group in the Richard Burton Archives, keeping company with Ron Berry, Elaine Morgan and Alun Richards.

The Richard Burton Archives, is the corporate memory and archive repository of Swansea University. The Archives, which received Archive Service Accreditation in 2014, actively supports the mission of the University to provide an environment of research excellence, to deliver an outstanding student experience with teaching of the highest quality, and to enrich the community and cultural life of Wales and beyond. The Raymond Williams Collection forms and contributes to all three elements.

The collection was brought together by Joy Williams, Raymond’s widow, and formed the basis for the research by Dai Smith for his biography Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale. At the point of deposit in 2007, the collection was inaccessible to researchers but, in 2010, funding from the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn Trust, the College of Arts and Humanities and Information Services and Systems at Swansea University enabled a project cataloguing archivist to be employed. The work took a year, involving the appraisal and arrangement of the papers and the creation of an online catalogue.

The papers of Raymond Williams are extensive and varied, mostly relating to the 1940s to the 1980s, and comprise 61 boxes. This material includes texts of his many creative and critical works including novels, short stories, plays, films and cross-over work, poetry, theoretical and academic publications (such as volumes written by Raymond Williams, compilations of his work, contributions to publications by others and miscellaneous non-fiction texts), reviews and newspaper articles, talks and lectures and much more. There is a significant run of letters with nearly 400 known correspondents including E P Thompson, Richard Hoggart and Stuart Hall as well as organisations such as the Workers’ Educational Association, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the New Left Review.

There are some items in the collection that appear to be of particular interest to researchers such as

• his notebooks, especially the two earlier volumes from when Raymond lived at 44 St Helen’s Road, Hastings, which contain extensive ideas, outlines and plans for future work. (ref. WWE/2/1/12/1-2)
• drafts for ‘Border Village’ / ‘Border Country’ (refs. WWE/2/1/1/5-6) (for more information about this work and examples from the collection see the entry in Literary Atlas Wales)
• documents revealing his more personal character, such as his diary for ‘Xmas Holiday Lectures in London arranged by the L[eague of] N[ations] U[nion]', and renewal membership form for LNU, 1937-1939 (ref. WWE/2/1/17/1/1) and later letters and official papers regarding military service and conscientious objection / pacifism, 1944-1951 (ref. WWE/2/1/17/4).

Raymond’s ideas and thoughts about culture, drama and literature, politics, communications and media, sociology, language, technology, history, war and ‘The Bomb’, class, education, region and geography, are just some of the many concepts that can be explored in the collection.

The rest of the archive is made up of the papers for Joyce Williams (publication and Raymond Williams’ work; Raymond Williams commemorative events and memorials; personal papers), the records of Harry and Gwen Williams (including a comprehensive series of diaries kept by Harry and several embroidered cards sent during World War One), and material compiled and created by Dai Smith relating to the research for and publication of Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale.

This breadth and depth of ideas within the collection enables it to be used in many different ways and the Archives looks forward to working with many more people. Please do explore the online catalogue, have a look at the Archives web pages for information about visiting, and contact us if you would like to consult the archive.

Katrina Legg, Assistant Archivist