Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh Marxist theorist, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature made a marked contribution to the Marxist critique of culture and the arts. Some 750,000 copies of his books were sold in UK editions alone and there are many translations available. His work laid foundations for the field of cultural studies and cultural materialism.