Granville Hicks is best-known as a literary critic whose interest in the political role of the intellectual in industrial society frequently placed him at the center of controversy during a career that spanned over five decades. Perhaps the most influential Marxist literary critic during the 1930s, and notorious for his involvement in a number of celebrated causes (including his well-publicized resignation from the Communist Party in 1939), Hicks is notable as a rare example of a critic whose standing as a vital and plausible interpreter of American life during his "post-communist" phase equaled his earlier reputation.

Hicks was born 9 September 1901 in Exeter, New Hampshire, to Carrie Weston (née Horne) Hicks and Frank Stevens Hicks, a foundry manager. Hicks grew up in a succession of small villages and industrial towns in New England, settings that resonate with the two major themes that would eventually define his cultural theory...