Culture and Anarchy
Arnold divides English society into Barbarians, Philistines and Populace, and then argues that none of them is capable of judging culture without help. The book began as lectures and keeps that spoken quality: it repeats, it circles, and it makes its case through phrases that have never quite left the language.
Its proposal is a state that could act as a centre of authority and light, which sounded illiberal to many of his readers and still does. But the underlying question, whether a commercial society can value anything that does not pay, is why the book is still quoted in arguments about education.
Public-domain status
First published in 1869. In the United States, works published before 1930 are in the public domain. In the European Union the general term is the life of the author plus 70 years; Matthew Arnold died in 1888, so this work has been free to republish there since 1959.
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