C. P. Snow, The Two Cultures: And A Second Look

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C. P. Snow’s “The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution” was first given as the annual Rede Lecture in Cambridge on 7 May 1959 and, according to custom, appeared the next day as a paperback pamphlet. By his own account, Snow did not expect it to make much impact. In 1956 and 1957, he had published articles on the same topic in the

New Statesman

(6 October 1956, 413-14) and the

Sunday Times

(10 and 17 March 1957) which had evoked no great response. But as he remarks in “ The Two Cultures: A Second Look” (1963), he soon started “to feel uncomfortably like the sorcerer’s apprentice” as “[a]rticles, references, letters, blame, praise” floated in (Snow, 1965, 54). Controversy continued to grow in the early 1960s, culminating in a savage attack by the literary critic F.…

4328 words

Citation: Tredell, Nicolas. "The Two Cultures: And A Second Look". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 12 June 2007 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=16212, accessed 19 March 2024.]

16212 The Two Cultures: And A Second Look 3 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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