Culture and Anarchy

1869

Central PR4022 C8

London: Smith, Elder, and Co.

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888) followed in the educationist footsteps of his father, the Reverend Thomas Arnold (1795-1842), the historian and famed headmaster of Rugby School. Matthew worked as Inspector of Schools in England throughout his adult life while also writing poetry and literary criticism. Culture and Anarchy, written in response to the Reform Bill of 1867, presents his view of an idealised English society: a society defined not by social class but by its access to ‘culture’, ‘the best which has been thought and said in the world’. Arnold believed such knowledge would turn ‘a stream of fresh and free thought upon our stock notions and habits’.