Proletarian literature is writing by or for the class-conscious working class, generally produced by left-wing authors sympathetic to Communist, socialist or anarchist politics and often intended as propaganda for social change rather than as politically neutral entertainment. Its British strand grew out of the Chartist movement and the wider socialist tradition rather than the Communist Party specifically, and the genre is distinguished from other fiction about working-class life, such as novels by Charles Dickens, by its emphasis on authorship: proletarian literature in the strict sense is written by working-class authors about the working class, not merely about them by middle-class writers. The genre peaked between 1930 and 1945; notable examples include Robert Tressell's The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists, Walter Greenwood's Love on the Dole and Takiji Kobayashi's The Crab Cannery Ship.
Facts
Place of Origin Notable ExampleThe Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914) 1 Defining TraitWorks about the working class written by working-class authors 1 Connections
Associated With
The movement's 1936 manifesto explicitly called for literature addressing the conditions of workers and peasants.
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Sources
1. The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists - Wikipedia
Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists section
Robert Tressell's The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists is the first important working-class novel in English literature.
Proletarian Literature Origins section
Proletarian Literature was a literary movement of works about the working class written by working class authors.
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists section, sentence 1
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists is a 1914 semi-autobiographical novel
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