Norbert Elias (1897–1990) has often been acclaimed as the ‘last great classical sociologist’. Zygmunt Bauman (1979, 117) recognised Elias as ‘the great sociologist of our time, who long ago anticipated solution to problems with which all sociologists all over the world keep trying (in vain) to come to grips’. While a great deal has changed, Bauman's assertion retains its currency. Elias broached apparently intractable problems that continue to haunt twenty-first century sociology. Across a long scientific life, Elias attempted to integrate empirically founded sociological knowledge with insights afforded by psychology and history. Yet for a long time, Elias was consigned to the margins of sociology. When broader recognition for his achievement arrived in the last three decades of the twentieth century, it was subject to misrepresentation, sometimes naive and sometimes gratuitous, as peddling a superannuated evolutionary or Eurocentric tradition. Against the activist temper of post-68 sociology, Elias's historical sense of sociological prudence smacked for some as the quietist apologetics of an aloof mandarin.

Despite Elias's legendary outsider status, the past four decades have witnessed an ascending curve of recognition by English-speaking scholars. This trajectory has been consolidated by the authoritative scholarly English edition of The Collected Works of Norbert Elias (UCD Press, 2006–14). Running to eighteen volumes, including three volumes of collected essays, fourteen books and a volume of interviews, the Collected Works amply demonstrates the scope and consistency of Elias's determination to reorientate sociology that he sustained, refined and distilled over more than six decades (see Appendix for a list of publications available in English). Elias's published output increased significantly after he retired from full-time teaching duties. Alongside the Collected Works as a fundamental resource for scholars, previously unpublished work, lectures and drafts have more recently been made available that allow us to look over Elias’s shoulder as he engaged in the creative process of further developing his model of sociology.