Francis Mulhern offers a stimulating and concise introduction to the meanings of "culture" in contemporary Western society. In this critical survey, he provides a compelling account of the conceptual and political issues involved in the changing definitions of "culture," as well as critical summaries of key thinkers, such as Mann, Arnold, Freud, Sartre, Woolf and Eliot, and their theories of twentieth-century culture. Mulhern also provides an understanding of the history of debates over high and low culture using an interdisciplinary approach which traverses the boundaries between literary and cultural studies.