author
William Graham Sumner
1840–1910
A leading Yale teacher and public thinker, this 19th-century scholar helped shape early American sociology while writing forcefully about economics, politics, and everyday social customs. His work remains a window into the debates over liberty, reform, and social order in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.
3 Audiobooks
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other
by William Graham Sumner
Folkways A Study of the Sociological Importance of Usages, Manners, Customs, Mores, and Morals
by William Graham Sumner
The Forgotten Man, and Other Essays
by William Graham Sumner
About the author
Born in Paterson, New Jersey, in 1840 and raised in Hartford, Connecticut, William Graham Sumner studied at Yale, then continued his education in Europe before entering the Episcopal ministry. He later moved from the church into academic life and spent most of his career at Yale, where he taught political and social science.
Sumner became one of the most prominent American social thinkers of his time and is often described as holding the first professorship in sociology at Yale. He wrote widely on economics, history, politics, and society, and he is especially remembered for his strong defense of laissez-faire ideas and for Folkways, a major study of customs, habits, and social norms.
His views were often blunt and controversial, particularly when he argued against paternalism and warned that reform movements could produce unintended consequences. Even so, his writing had a lasting influence on American discussions of individual liberty, social evolution, and the role of institutions in everyday life.