Ronald Barthes was a French writer most widely known for declaring "the death of the author." It is ironic, then, in a way Barthes would surely appreciate, that his Œuvres completes fill nearly 6,000 pages with the unmistakable observations, distinct voice, and style that shaped the form and content of what came to be known as "cultural studies." He was sixty-five years old in 1980 when a laundry truck struck him down in a street in front of the College de France. He died of his injuries four weeks later.

Barthes was born in November 1915, in Cherbourg. His father died before his first birthday, and he was raised by his mother and paternal grandparents in coastal Bayonne. Normal progress to a university degree was blocked by the onset of tuberculosis. Over the course of ten years convalescing in and out of sanatoria, Barthes earned advanced degrees...