Culture and Anarchy: An Essay in Political and Social Criticism

Culture and Anarchy opens with a lengthy Preface that offers an overview of many of the important ideas that will dominate the work as a whole. Matthew Arnold describes the first aim of his Preface as “to address a word of exhortation to the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge” (76), lamenting the fact that they have neglected to print more recent editions of Bishop Thomas Wilson’s Maxims of Piety and Christianity (see: Key Figures), a work Arnold cites as an important inspiration for his own thought. Arnold argues that it is essential that the Society should publish classic religious works like Wilson’s to combat “the cartloads of rubbish circulated at present under this designation [of religious texts]” (78). Arnold praises the wisdom of Wilson in both the Maxims and in another work, Sacra Privata, crediting Wilson for his “honesty and good sense united with ardour and unction” (81). Arnold urges the Society to republish Wilson’s works, claiming they will exercise a good religious influence upon Englishmen.

Arnold then passes onto the more specific designs of Culture and Anarchy as a whole. He describes the main idea of the work, which is to argue that true

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