Proletarian literature

Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by left-wing writers mainly for the class-conscious proletariat. Though the Encyclopædia Britannica states that because it "is essentially an intended device of revolution", it is therefore often published by the Communist 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 the Chartist movement, and socialism, amongst others.^[3] Furthermore, writing about the British working-class writers, H Gustav Klaus, in The 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 as Charles Dickens (Hard Times), John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath), and Henry Green (Living).^[5] Similarly, though some of poet William Blake's (1757–1827) works are early examples of working-class literature, including the two "The Chimney Sweeper" poems, published in Songs of Innocence in 1789 and Songs of Experience in 1794, which deal with the subject of child labour,^[6] Blake, whose father was a tradesman, was not a proletarian writer.