Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created byleft-wing writers mainly for theclass-consciousproletariat. Though theEncyclopædia Britannica states that because it "is essentially an intended device of revolution", it is therefore often published by theCommunist Party or left-wing sympathizers,[1] the proletarian novel has also been categorized without any emphasis on revolution, as a novel "about the working classes and working-class life; perhaps with the intention of making propaganda".[2] This different emphasis may reflect a difference between Russian, American and other traditions of working-class writing, with that of Britain. The British tradition was not especially inspired by the Communist Party, but had its roots in theChartist movement, andsocialism, amongst others.[3] Furthermore, writing about the British working-class writers, H Gustav Klaus, inThe Socialist Novel: Towards the Recovery of a Tradition (1982) suggested that "the once current [term] 'proletarian' is, internationally, on the retreat, while the competing concepts of 'working-class' and 'socialist' continue to command about equal adherence".[4]
The word proletarian is also used to describe works about the working class by working-class authors, to distinguish them from works by middle-class authors such asCharles Dickens (Hard Times),John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath), andHenry Green (Living).[5] Similarly, though some of poetWilliam Blake's (1757–1827) works are early examples of working-class literature, including the two "The Chimney Sweeper" poems, published inSongs of Innocence in 1789 andSongs of Experience in 1794, which deal with the subject ofchild labour,[6] Blake, whose father was a tradesman, was not a proletarian writer.
Theproletariat are members of theworking class. The proletarian novel is a subgenre of thenovel, written by workers mainly for other workers. It overlaps and sometimes is synonymous with the working-class novel,[7] socialist novel,[8]social problem novel (also problem novel or sociological novel orsocial novel),[9] propaganda or thesis novel,[10] andsocialist realism novel.
The proletarian novel maycomment onpolitical events, systems and theories, and is frequently seen as an instrument to promote social reform or political revolution among the working classes. Proletarian literature is created especially bycommunist,socialist, andanarchist authors. It is about the lives of poor, and the period 1930 to 1945 in particular produced many such novels. However, there were works before and after these dates. In Britain the termworking class literature, noveletc. is more generally used. The intention of the writers of proletarian literature is to lift the workers from the slums, by inspiring them to embrace the possibilities of social change or a political revolution.
Australian authors who have contributed to proletarian literature have typically been affiliated with theCommunist Party of Australia or theAustralian Labor Party. Some prominent proletarian fiction authors includeFrank Hardy (Power Without Glory) andDavid Ireland (The Unknown Industrial Prisoner about factory workers inWestern Sydney).
Two leading French writers who were born into the working class wereJean Giono (1895–1970) andHenry Poulaille (1896–1980).
Jean Giono was the son of a cobbler[11] and a laundry woman, who spent most of his life inManosque,Alpes-de-Haute-Provence. He was a voracious reader but had to leave school at sixteen to work in a bank to help support his family. He published his first novelColline in 1929, which won him thePrix Brentano and $1000, and an English translation of the book,[12] he left the bank in 1930 to devote himself to writing on a full-time basis.[13]
The novels Giono published during the nineteen-thirties are set inProvence, with peasants as protagonists, and displaying apantheistic view of nature.[14]Marcel Pagnol based three of his films on Giono's work of this period:Regain, withFernandel and music byHonegger,Angèle, andLa Femme du boulanger, withRaimu.[14]
After World War II he planned on writing a sequence of ten novels inspired byBalzac’sLa Comédie humaine, in which he would depict characters from all strata of society rather than peasants, and contrast different moments in history by depicting the experiences of members of the same family a hundred years apart. But Giono only completed the four Hussard novels,Mort d’un personnage (1948)),Le Hussard sur le Toit (1951),Le Bonheur fou (1957),Angelo (1958).[14]
Henry Poulaille was the son of a carpenter and cane worker, who was orphaned at fourteen. In addition to writing novels Poulaille was active in encouraging working class writing in France from the 1930s.[15] He is the author of numerous novels, essays on the cinema, literature, and popular traditions. Amongst the novels that he wrote are autobiographical works:There were four (1925);Daily Bread (1931);The Wretched of the Earth (1935);Soldier of Pain (1937);The Survivors: Soldier of Pain 2 (1938);Alone in life to 14 years (published posthumously in 1980). In these novels, based on his own life, Poulaiile depicts a working-class family, the Magneux.[16]
PoetJohn Clare (1793–1864) was an important early British working-class writer. Clare was the son of a farm labourer, and came to be known for his celebratory representations of the English countryside and his lamentation of its disruption.[17] His poetry underwent a major re-evaluation in the late 20th century and he is now considered to be among the most important 19th-century poets.[18] His biographerJonathan Bate states that Clare was "the greatest labouring-class poet that England has ever produced. No one has ever written more powerfully of nature, of a rural childhood, and of the alienated and unstable self".[19]
A mid-Victorian example of a working-class novel ischartist Thomas Martin Wheeler'sSunshine and Shadows, which was serialized in theNorthern Star 1849–50.[20] Another chartist writer was the shoemaker poetThomas Cooper,[21] who, while in prison for making an inflammatory speech, "followed in the footsteps ofBunyan and other radicals and wrote imaginatively about the themes of oppression and emancipation".[22]
Walter Greenwood'sLove on the Dole (1933) has been described as an "excellent example" of an English proletarian novel.[23] It was written during the early 1930s as a response to the crisis of unemployment, which was being felt locally, nationally, and internationally. It is set in Hanky Park, the industrial slum inSalford where Greenwood was born and brought up. The story begins around the time of theGeneral Strike of 1926, but its main action takes place in 1931.
Several working-class writers wrote about their experience of life in themerchant navy, includingJames Hanley,Jim Phelan,George Garrett, andJohn Sommerfield. Liverpool-Irish writer James Hanley wrote a number of works based on his experiences at sea as well as a member of a working-class seafaring family. An early example is the novellaThe Last Voyage (1931), in which stoker John Reilly, who is still working only because he lied about his age, now faces his last voyage.[24] Although Reilly is in his mid-sixties he has a young family, who will have to live in future on his inadequate pension.[25] In another sense this is Reilly's last voyage, because despairing of the future he throws himself into the ship's furnace: “Saw all his life illuminated in those flames. ‘Not much for us. Sweat, sweat. Pay off. Sign on. Sweat, sweat. Pay off. Finish. Ah, well!’”[26][27] Among other works by Hanley areBoy (1931) andThe Furys (1935).
There were a number ofWelsh writers who wrote works based on their experiences as coal miners, including novelist (and playwright)Jack Jones (1884–1970),B.L. Coombes (1893–1974), novelistsGwyn Thomas (1913–1981).Lewis Jones (1897–1939), andGwyn Jones (1907–1999), and poetIdris Davies (1905–53). Jack Jones was a miner's son fromMerthyr Tydfil who was himself a miner from the age of 12. He was active in the union movement and politics, starting with theCommunist Party, but in the course of his life he was involved, to some degree, with all the major British parties. Amongst his novels of working-class life areRhondda Roundabout (1935) andBidden to the Feast (1938). Bert Coombes came from Herefordshire to Resolven in south Wales as a teenager, where he spent the rest of his life, working as a miner for 40 years. Among his works, the autobiographicalThese Poor Hands (Gollancz 1939) is the classic account of life as a miner in south Wales. The political development of a young miner is the subject ofCwmardy (1937),Lewis Jones's (1897–1939) largely autobiographical novel.Gwyn Thomas (1913–81) was also a coalminer's son from the Rhondda, but won a scholarship toOxford and then became a schoolmaster. He wrote 11 novels as well as short stories, plays, and radio and television scripts, most of which focused on unemployment in theRhondda Valley in the 1930s. Thomas's first accepted book was a collection of short stories,Where Did I Put My Pity: Folk-Tales From the Modern Welsh, which appeared in 1946. Another writer who escaped from his proletarian background wasGwyn Jones (1907–1999). He wrote about this world in novels and short stories, includingTimes Like These (1936) which explores the life of a working-class family during the1926 miners' strike. The mining valleys produced a significant working-class poet inIdris Davies (1905–53), who worked as a coal miner before qualifying as a teacher. Davies was a Welsh speaker but wrote primarily in English. His works include a few poems in Welsh.Gwalia Deserta (1938) is about theGreat Depression, while the subject ofThe Angry Summer (1943) is the 1926 miners' strike.Ron Berry (1920–1997), son of Rhondda collier who worked underground himself, produced novels and short stories rooted in the Welsh working class.Rhys Davies, author ofA Time To Laugh (1937), andMenna Gallie, author ofStrike for a Kingdom (1959) andThe Small Mine (1962), while not working class, also wrote about life in the mining valleys ofSouth Wales. Novelist and poetChristopher Meredith (1954- ), the son of a steelworker and former coalminer and formerly a steelworker himself, writes out of Welsh working class experience, especially in his novelShifts (1988), set in the 1970s against the decline of the steel industry, and in most of the short stories ofBrief Lives (2018).
Harold Heslop, author of the novelThe Earth Beneath (1946) was another coal miner, but from the north-east ofEngland, as wasSid Chaplin, who wroteThe Thin Seam (1949).
BothAlan Sillitoe,Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1958) andStan Barstow,A Kind of Loving (1960), were working class writers associated with the so-calledAngry young men; they were also linked withKitchen sink realism, a literary movement that used a style of social realism. This often depicted the domestic situations of working class Britons living in cramped rented accommodation and spending their off-hours drinking in grimy pubs, to explore social issues and political controversies. However, some of the writers also associated with these two movements, likeJohn Osborne andJohn Braine, did not come from the working-class.[28][29]
The following are some other important twentieth-century British working class novelists and novels:Robert Tressell,The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists (1914);James C. Welsh,The Underworld (1920);Ethel Carnie Holdsworth,This Slavery (1925);Ellen Wilkinson,Clash (1929);Lionel Britton,Hunger and Love (1931);Lewis Grassic GibbonA Scots Quair (trilogy, 1932-4);Barry Hines,A Kestrel for a Knave (1968);William McIlvanney,Docherty (1975);Pat Barker,Union Street (1982);James Kelman,The Busconductor Hines (1984);Irvine Welsh,Trainspotting (1993).[30]
Edward Bond is an important working-class dramatist and his playSaved (1965) became one of the best knowncause célèbres in 20th century British theatre history.Saved delves into the lives of a selection of South London working class youths suppressed – as Bond would see it – by a brutal economic system and unable to give their lives meaning, who drift eventually into barbarous mutual violence.[31]
Notable Irish proletarian writers of the early 20th century includedLiam O’Flaherty andSeán O'Casey.[32]Leslie Daiken,Charles Donnelly andPeadar O'Donnell are also well-known.[33][34]
Modern working-class authors includeKarl Parkinson,Kevin Barry andRoddy Doyle, .[35]
 | This sectionneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this section. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.(February 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
The proletarian literature movement in Japan emerged from a trend in the latter half of the 1910s of literature about working conditions by authors who had experienced them, later called Taisho workers literature. Representative works from this period include Sukeo Miyajima'sMiners (坑夫) and Karoku Miyachi'sTomizō the Vagrant (放浪者富蔵), as well as works dealing with military experiences which were also associated with theTaishō democracy, the emergence of which allowed for the development of proletarian literature in Japan.[citation needed] In 1921,Ōmi Komaki and Hirofumi Kaneko founded the literary magazineThe Sowers (種蒔く人), which aimed to reform both the current literary scene and society.The Sowers attracted attention for recording tragedies that occurred in the wake of the1923 Great Kantō earthquake.
In 1924,Literary Front (文芸戦線) magazine was launched by Hatsunosuke Hirabayashi andSuekichi Aono, becoming the main magazine of the Japanese proletarian literature movement. New writing such asYoshiki Hayama'sThe Prostitute (淫売婦) andDenji Kuroshima'sA Herd of Pigs (豚群) also began to appear in the magazine.[citation needed]
In 1928, the Japanese Proletarian Arts Federation (全日本無産者芸術連盟, Nippona Artista Proleta Federacio, known asNAPF) was founded, bringing together the Japan Proletarian Artists Union (日本プロレタリア芸術連盟), the Labor-Farmers Artists Union (労農芸術家連盟), and the Vanguard Artists Union (前衛芸術家同盟). NAPF was largely the responsibility of two up-and-coming writers calledTakiji Kobayashi andSunao Tokunaga, and the organization's newsletterBattleflag (戦旗,Senki) published many influential works such as Kobayashi'sThe Crab Cannery Ship (蟹工船) andMarch 15, 1928 (一九二八年三月十五日) and Tokunaga'sA Street Without Sun (太陽のない街). Another important magazine wasReconstruction (改造) which published writings fromRyunosuke Akutagawa andYuriko Miyamoto, who had just returned from theSoviet Union. Other more renowned publishers likeChūo Kōron (Central Review),Kaizō (Reconstruction), andMiyako Shinbun also published works by proletarian authors, even those who were members of the Communist party.[36]
Author Korehito Kurehara traveled secretly to the Soviet Union in 1930 for theProfintern conference, and upon his return in 1931, he started agitating for the democratization of literary organizations. This sparked the drive to organize literary circles in factories and rural areas, creating a new source of readers and writers there.
In 1931, the NAPF became the Union of Japanese Proletarian Cultural Organizations (日本プロレタリア文化連盟, Federacio de Proletaj Kultur Organizoj Japanaj, also known asKOPF), incorporating other cultural organizations, such as musicians and filmmakers. KOPF produced various magazines includingWorking Woman (働く婦人)
The Japanese government cracked down harshly on proletarian authors, as the Japanese Communist Party had been outlawed since its founding in 1922. Though not all authors were associated with the party, the KOPF was, leading to mass arrests such as theMarch 15 incident. Some authors, such as Takiji Kobayashi were tortured to death by police, while others were forced torenounce their socialist beliefs.
Kanikōsen (1929) is a short novel byTakiji Kobayashi (translated into English asThe Cannery Boat (1933),The Factory Ship (1973) andThe Crab Cannery Ship (2013)), which depicts the lives of Japanese crab fishermen. Told from aleft-wing point of view, it is concerned with the hardships that the crew face and how they are exploited by the owners. The book has been made into a film and asmanga.
The proletarian literature movement in Korea was initially driven by the annexation of Korea by Japan in 1910 and the state of conditions that followed within the country.[37] Proletarian literature acted as a movement that attempted to unify Korea against the shift into imperialism and capitalism that was brought forth by colonial Japan and its government that occupied Korea from the point of annexation until the end of World War II in 1945.[37] The Korean proletarian literature movement became most prominent in the late 1920s and early 1930s, with the formation of multiple social and cultural groups that created, discussed, and revolved around proletarian arts.[37][38]
Works of Korean proletarian literature written before 1927 revolved around reconstructing and reforming social issues. One such example would be the short story "Starvation and Slaughter" ("Kia wa Saryuk", 1925) by author Ch'oe Sŏ-hae, which detailed problems like discrimination between the wealthy and the poor classes.[39] After 1927, Korean proletarian literature started to revolve around ideas that involved intellectuals rather than focus on the struggles between the rich and poor. Examples of these works includeThe Peasant Cho˘ng To-ryong by Yi Ki-yo˘ng,A Transitional Period by Han So˘r-ya,Rat Fire by So˘hwa, andHometown by Kohyang.[39]
Cultural movements, especially those of left-wing politics, were fundamental in driving the proletarian genre and movement in Korea. Yŏmgunsa, meaning Torch of the Masses, was a group and movement formed in 1922 that was led by the writerSong Yŏng, and built on a focus towards literature pertaining to social issues and class politics. PASKYULA was a group that reacted to and discussed commonplace literature and art, with more of a focus on the cultural aspects of the materials. These groups were two largely important circles in the movement of unification that represented the mix of proletarian and bourgeois ideals that initially propelled the genre of proletarian literature in Japan-occupied Korea.[40][41]
Leader of Yŏmgunsa, and a key author in KAPF's circle, Song Yŏng primarily wrote with the intention of forming a solidarity within Korea as well as with Japan through his writing.[42] Two works, "Our Love" in 1929, and "Shift Change" in 1930 highlight Yŏng's ideology of unification within his writing, as well as the idea of moving away from cultural nostalgia and an idyllic past.[42] In "Our Love", the process of industrialization and its resulting urban cities are portrayed as locales of potential opportunity rather than iniquitous environments, depicting a contrasting opinion to other works produced within KAPF. This is first shown through Yong-hee, a primary character within the story who eventually leaves the Korean countryside and travels to Tokyo, in pursuit of escaping her hometown's oppressive patriarchal culture and finding unity, independence, and equality in urban Japan's workforce.[42] Set in Japan, "Shift Change" focuses more on the working class movement itself through a group of feuding Korean and Japanese workers. The resolution results in a reconciliation through combined effort, encouraging a combined effort from both the Japanese and Korean proletariat.[42]
During the Proletarian Movement, there was an urge from Japanese colonialists to “convert” Koreans away from communism. This conversion system was calledcho˘nhyang.[43]Cho˘nhyang sparked numerous works from various authors such asThe Mire by Han So˘r-ya,New Year’s Day by Yi Kiyo˘ng,A Prospect by Paek Ch’o˘l,Barley by Kim Nam-ch’o˘n, andManagement by Kim Nam-ch’o˘n, all published between the years 1939 and 1940.[44]
Panait Istrati (1884–1935), was aRomanian working class writer, the son of the laundress and of aGreeksmuggler. He studied in primary school for six years inBaldovinești, after being held back twice. He then earned his living as an apprentice to a tavern-keeper, then as a pastry cook and peddler. In the meantime, he was a prolific reader.[45]
Istrati's first attempts at writing date from around 1907 when he started sending pieces to thesocialist periodicals in Romania, debuting with the article,Hotel Regina inRomânia Muncitoare. Here, he later published his first short stories,Mântuitorul ("The Redeemer"),Calul lui Bălan ("Bălan's Horse"),Familia noastră ("Our Family"),1 Mai ("May Day"). He also contributed pieces to otherleftist newspapers such asDimineața,Adevărul, andViața Socială. In 1910, he was involved in organizing a strike in Brăila. He went toBucharest,Istanbul,Cairo,Naples,Paris (1913–1914), andSwitzerland, where he settled for a while, trying to cure histuberculosis). Istrati's travels were marked by two successive unhappy marriages, a brief return to Romania in 1915 when he tried to earn his living as a pig farmer, and long periods of vagabondage.[46] In1923 Istrati's storyKyra Kyralina (orChira Chiralina) was published with a preface by the famous French novelistRomaine Rolland. It became the first in hisAdrien Zograffiliterary cycle. Rolland was fascinated with Istrati's adventurous life, urging him to write more and publishing parts of his work inClarté, the journal that Rolland andHenri Barbusse ran.[47] The next major work by Istrati was thenovelCodine.[47]
An important movement In the first years of theRussian Revolution,Proletkult, was an effort to encourage literacy. This was something quite different from the later, traditional and realist proletarian novel of theStalin years.
InLiterature and Revolution, Trotsky examined aesthetic issues in relation to class and the Russian revolution. Soviet scholar Robert Bird considered his work as the "first systematic treatment of art by a Communist leader" and a catalyst for later, Marxist cultural and critical theories.[48] Trotsky presented a critique of contemporary literary movements such asFuturism and emphasised a need of cultural autonomy for the development of a socialist culture. According to literary criticTerry Eagleton, Trotsky recognised “like Lenin on the need for a socialist culture to absorb the finest products of bourgeois art”.[49] Trotsky himself viewed the proletarian culture as “temporary and transitional” which would provide the foundations for a culture above classes. He also argued that the pre-conditions for artistic creativity were economic well-being and emancipation from material constraints.[50] Political scientist Baruch Knei-Paz characterisedhis view on the role of the party as transmitters of culture to the masses and raising the standards of education, as well as entry into the cultural sphere, but that the process of artistic creation in terms of language and presentation should be the domain of the practitioner. Knei-Paz also noted key distinctions between Trotsky’s approach on cultural matters andStalin's policy in the 1930s.[51]
In the 1930sSocialist realism became the predominant trend in Russia under the leadership of Stalin.Maxim Gorky was declared the founder of socrealism, and his pre-revolutionary works about the Revolutionary proletariat (the novelMother and the playEnemies) were declared the first Socrealist works. Gorky described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalization.[52] However, he did not come from a working-class family and neither did another prominent writer in the early years after theRussian Revolution of 1917,Alexander Ostrovsky.[53][54]
However,Nikolai Ostrovsky is an important writer, of the early Soviet era, from a working-class family. His novelHow the Steel Was Tempered (1932) has been among the most successful works ofRussian literature, with tens of millions of copies printed in many languages around the world.[55][56] The book is a fictionalized autobiography of Ostrovsky's life, who had a difficult working-class childhood and became aKomsomol member in July 1919 and went to the front as a volunteer. The novel's protagonist, Pavel Korchagin, represented the "young hero" of Russian literature: he is dedicated to his political causes, which help him to overcome his tragedies.[57]
Leonid Leonov (1899 — 1994) was a Soviet novelist and playwright. His novelThe Russian Forest (1953) was acclaimed by the authorities as a model Soviet book onWorld War II and received theLenin Prize, but its implication that the Soviet regime had cut down "the symbol of Old Russian culture" caused some nervousness, andNikita Khrushchev reminded the author that "not all trees are useful ... from time to time the forest must be thinned."[58]
Proletarian literature inScandinavia is represented by writers such as the DaneMartin Andersen Nexø, NorwegianJohan Falkberget andVäinö Linna from Finland.[59]
In Sweden proletarian literature became known in the 1910s. Early pioneers wereDan Andersson andMartin Koch. Proletarian literature became widely known in the 1930s when a group of non-academic, self-taught writers likeIvar Lo-Johansson,Eyvind Johnson,Jan Fridegård andHarry Martinson appeared writing about the working-class, often from the perspective of a young man.[59]
Swedish proletarian literature is perhaps most closely associated with Ivar Lo-Johansson, who wrote about the lives ofstatare in his acclaimed novelGodnatt, jord ("Goodnight, earth", 1933) and in many short stories, collected in the booksStatarna (1936–1937) andJordproletärerna ("Proletarians of the Earth", 1941). Jan Fridegård also wrote about the lives of statare and is best known for a series of autobiographical novels beginning withJag Lars Hård ("I Lars Hård", 1935). His first novelEn natt i juli ("A night in July", 1933) is about a strike among statare, and depicts statare in a much rawer way than Lo-Johansson. Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson both later went on to write about other subjects and are mostly associated with proletarian literature by their highly acclaimed and widely read autobiographical novels published in the 1930s.Moa Martinson wrote about her own experiences of poor farm life as a wife and mother in several novels.Rudolf Värnlund depicted life inStockholm from a proletarian perspective in several novels, and in 1932 his playDen heliga familjen ("The holy family") was the first play by a proletarian writer that was staged at theRoyal Dramatic Theatre.[60]Lars Ahlin debuted in 1944 withTåbb med manifestet ("Tåbb with the manifest"), a novel about a young man looking for work and becoming politically aware. Many of the proletarian writers became prominent in Swedish literature. Eyvind Johnson and Harry Martinson were elected members of theSwedish Academy and shared theNobel Prize in Literature in 1974.[59]
Halldór Laxness's novelIndependent People (1934-35), deals with the struggle of poorIcelandic farmers in the early 20th century, only freed fromdebt bondage in the last generation, and surviving on isolatedcrofts in an inhospitable landscape. It is an indictment ofcapitalism andmaterialism, the cost of the "self-reliant spirit" to relationships. This novel, along with several, helped Laxness win theNobel Prize in Literature in 1955.[61][62]
The most important American working-class writers gathered in the First American Writers Congress of 1935. TheLeague of American Writers was backed by theCommunist Party USA. Among the famous international writers who attended the Congress were Georg Fink (pseudonym of the German writerKurt Münzer),Mike Gold of New York (both of whom were Jewish),José Revueltas of Mexico,Nicomedes Guzmán of Chile,Jorge Icaza of Ecuador, and numerous others.[citation needed]
In the United States,Mike Gold, author ofJews Without Money, was the first to promote proletarian literature inMax Eastman's magazineThe Liberator and later inThe New Masses. The Communist party newspaper,The Daily Worker also published some literature, as did numerous other magazines, includingThe Anvil, edited byJack Conroy,Blast, andPartisan Review.[citation needed]
Other examples of American proletarian writing includeB. Traven,The Death Ship (1926) (though it is presumed that Traven was born in Germany);Agnes Smedley,Daughter of Earth (1929);Edward Dahlberg,Bottom Dogs (1929);Jack Conroy,The Disinherited (1933);James T. Farrell,Studs Lonigan (a trilogy, 1932-5);Robert Cantwell,The Land of Plenty (1934);Henry Roth,Call It Sleep (1934);Meridel Le Sueur,Salute to Spring (1940) andTillie Olsen,Yonnondio (1930s, published 1974).
Writers likeJohn Steinbeck,Theodore Dreiser, andJohn Dos Passos, who wrote about the working class, but who came from more well-to-do backgrounds, are not included here.
{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link){{cite web}}:Missing or empty|url= (help){{cite web}}:|author= has generic name (help);Missing or empty|url= (help){{cite web}}:Missing or empty|url= (help){{cite web}}:Missing or empty|url= (help)