A great mix of literary criticism - his readings of G. Eliot and Dickens are particularly impressive - history and political agitation. Williams starts with a discussion of the pastoral mode, which is valuable in itself. But the book really gets humming when he hits the early moderns, and starts to track the different ways that pastoral themes have been used and abused by people in different times and classes. This is in the middle portion of the book. The last few chapters finally started to get a bit too preachy. Now, I don't mind some preachiness about poverty and oppression and so on, since that's always nice to have. But preachiness about the 'decadent,' 'weak' tradition of 'country house' writing, which somewhat ambivalently includes Henry James, Ivy-Compton Burnett and, no doubt, Elizabeth Bowen is unnecessarily old-Marxisty. As the book draws to a close, you get the impression that Williams prefers Hardy to James, not because of any literary qualities, but because Hardy writes about threshing machines and grew up in the lower middle classes, while James writes about princesses and was a bit of a Brahmin. Now that may all be true, but then you're making judgment about who's the better political sociologist. And to turn around and say the real heirs of Austen and so on are detective story writers is more than bit whack. There's not much doubt that detective novels are the most conservative literary form in existence, Raymond. Too bad. Otherwise, 5 stars for great writing, avoiding theory b.s., and caring about books. ( )

The academic book I wish I'd written. ( )