SOURCE: Gross, John. “Matthew Arnold and Us.” Commentary 98, no. 1 (July 1994): 38-42.

In the following essay, Gross presents an overview of the critical response to Arnold's work and concludes that Culture and Anarchy remains relevant to readers in modern times.

A hundred twenty-five years after it was first published, a new edition of Matthew Arnold's Culture and Anarchy—the classic defense of high culture against the depredations of modernity—is still an event. This is a work that speaks to us directly, even intimately; a work that still sets a challenge. And yet a reader coming to Culture and Anarchy for the first time, knowing nothing of it but its reputation, could soon find himself wondering whether this is the same book as the one he has heard so much about.

Samuel Lipman's admirable edition is reinforced by a commentary consisting of four newly commissioned essays—by Lipman himself...