Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
writers mainly for the
class-conscious proletariat
The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...
. Though the ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...
'' states that because it "is essentially an intended device of revolution", it is therefore often published by the
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
or left wing sympathizers, 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". 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
Chartism was a working-class movement for political reform in the United Kingdom that erupted from 1838 to 1857 and was strongest in 1839, 1842 and 1848. It took its name from the People's Charter of 1838 and was a national protest movement, w ...
, and
socialism
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
, amongst others. 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
erm'proletarian' is, internationally, on the retreat, while the competing concepts of 'working-class' and 'socialist' continue to command about equal adherence".
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
Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian e ...
(''
Hard Times''),
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social ...
(''
The Grapes of Wrath
''The Grapes of Wrath'' is an American realist novel written by John Steinbeck and published in 1939. The book won the National Book Award
and Pulitzer Prize for fiction, and it was cited prominently when Steinbeck was awarded the Nobel Prize ...
''), and
Henry Green
Henry Green was the pen name of Henry Vincent Yorke (29 October 1905 – 13 December 1973), an English writer best remembered for the novels '' Party Going'', ''Living'' and ''Loving''. He published a total of nine novels between 1926 and 1952 ...
(''
Living
Living or The Living may refer to:
Common meanings
*Life, a condition that distinguishes organisms from inorganic objects and dead organisms
** Living species, one that is not extinct
*Personal life, the course of an individual human's life
* ...
'').
[John Fordham, "'A Strange Field’: Region and Class in the Novels of Harold Heslop" in ''Intermodernism: Literary Culture in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain'', ed. Kristin Bluemel. Published 2009 :Edinburgh University Press, note no.1, p. 71.] Similarly, though some of poet
William Blake
William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. ...
's (1757–1827) works are early examples of working-class literature, including the two "The Chimney Sweeper" poems, published in ''
Songs of Innocence
''Songs of Innocence and of Experience'' is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases: a few first copies were printed and Illuminated manuscript, illuminated by Blake himself in 1789; five years later, he b ...
'' in 1789 and ''
Songs of Experience
''Songs of Innocence and of Experience'' is a collection of illustrated poems by William Blake. It appeared in two phases: a few first copies were printed and illuminated by Blake himself in 1789; five years later, he bound these poems with a ...
'' in 1794, which deal with the subject of
child labour
Child labour refers to the exploitation of children through any form of work that deprives children of their childhood, interferes with their ability to attend regular school, and is mentally, physically, socially and morally harmful. Such e ...
, Blake, whose father was a tradesman, was not a proletarian writer.
Proletarian novel
The
proletariat
The proletariat (; ) is the social class of wage-earners, those members of a society whose only possession of significant economic value is their labour power (their capacity to work). A member of such a class is a proletarian. Marxist philo ...
are members of the
working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...
. The proletarian novel is a subgenre of the
novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
, written by workers mainly for other workers. It overlaps and sometimes is synonymous with the working-class novel, socialist novel,
social problem novel (also problem novel or sociological novel or
social novel
The social novel, also known as the social problem (or social protest) novel, is a "work of fiction in which a prevailing social problem, such as gender, race, or class prejudice, is dramatized through its effect on the characters of a novel". Mor ...
), propaganda or thesis novel, and
socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ch ...
novel.
The proletarian novel may
comment
Comment may refer to:
* Comment (linguistics) or rheme, that which is said about the topic (theme) of a sentence
* Bernard Comment (born 1960), Swiss writer and publisher
Computing
* Comment (computer programming), explanatory text or informa ...
on
political
Politics (from , ) is the set of activities that are associated with making decisions in groups, or other forms of power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of resources or status. The branch of social science that studies ...
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 by
communist
Communism (from Latin la, communis, lit=common, universal, label=none) is a far-left sociopolitical, philosophical, and economic ideology and current within the socialist movement whose goal is the establishment of a communist society, a s ...
,
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
, and
anarchist
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is skeptical of all justifications for authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including, though not neces ...
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 term
working class
The working class (or labouring class) comprises those engaged in manual-labour occupations or industrial work, who are remunerated via waged or salaried contracts. Working-class occupations (see also " Designation of workers by collar colou ...
literature, novel ''etc''. 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.
By country
Australia
Australian authors who have contributed to proletarian literature have typically been affiliated with the
Communist Party of Australia
The Communist Party of Australia (CPA), known as the Australian Communist Party (ACP) from 1944 to 1951, was an Australian political party founded in 1920. The party existed until roughly 1991, with its membership and influence having been i ...
;
Australian Labor Party
The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms the f ...
or
Australian Greens
The Australian Greens, commonly known as The Greens, are a confederation of Green state and territory political parties in Australia. As of the 2022 federal election, the Greens are the third largest political party in Australia by vote and th ...
. Some prominent proletarian fiction authors include
Frank Hardy
Francis Joseph Hardy (21 March 1917 – 28 January 1994), published as Frank J. Hardy and also under the pseudonym Ross Franklyn, was an Australian novelist and writer. He is best known for his 1950 novel '' Power Without Glory'', and for his ...
(''Power Without Glory'') and
David Ireland (''The Unknown Industrial Prisoner'' about factory workers in
Western Sydney
Western may refer to:
Places
*Western, Nebraska, a village in the US
*Western, New York, a town in the US
* Western Creek, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western Junction, Tasmania, a locality in Australia
*Western world, countries that i ...
).
France
Two leading French writers who were born into the working class were
Jean Giono
Jean Giono (30 March 1895 – 8 October 1970) was a French writer who wrote works of fiction mostly set in the Provence region of France.
First period
Jean Giono was born to a family of modest means, his father a cobbler of Piedmontese descent a ...
(1895–1970) and
Henry Poulaille
Henry Poulaille (5 December 1896, Paris – 30 March 1980, Cachan) was a French writer and a pioneer of proletarian literature.
Biography
Early life and World War I
He was the son of Henri, an anarchist carpenter from Nantes, and Hortens ...
(1896–1980).
Jean Giono
Jean Giono (30 March 1895 – 8 October 1970) was a French writer who wrote works of fiction mostly set in the Provence region of France.
First period
Jean Giono was born to a family of modest means, his father a cobbler of Piedmontese descent a ...
was the son of a cobbler and a laundry woman, who spent most of his life in
Manosque
Manosque (; Provençal Occitan: ''Manòsca'' in classical norm or ''Manosco'' in Mistralian norm) is the largest town and commune in the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence department in southeastern France. However, it is not the ''préfecture'' (capital) ...
,
Alpes-de-Haute-Provence
Alpes-de-Haute-Provence or sometimes abbreviated as AHP (; oc, Aups d'Auta Provença; ) is a department in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur region of France, bordering Alpes-Maritimes and Italy to the east, Var to the south, Vaucluse to the west ...
. 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 novel ''Colline'' in 1929, which won him the
Prix Brentano and $1000, and an English translation of the book,
he left the bank in 1930 to devote himself to writing on a full-time basis.
The novels Giono published during the nineteen-thirties are set in
Provence
Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...
, with peasants as protagonists, and displaying a
pantheistic
Pantheism is the belief that reality, the universe and the cosmos are identical with divinity and a supreme supernatural being or entity, pointing to the universe as being an immanent creator deity still expanding and creating, which has ex ...
view of nature.
Marcel Pagnol
Marcel Paul Pagnol (; 28 February 1895 – 18 April 1974) was a French novelist, playwright, and filmmaker. Regarded as an auteur, in 1946, he became the first filmmaker elected to the Académie française. Although his work is less fashionabl ...
based three of his films on Giono's work of this period: ''Regain'', with
Fernandel
Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin (8 May 1903 – 26 February 1971), better known as Fernandel, was a French actor and singer. Born near Marseille, France, to Désirée Bedouin and Denis Contandin, originating in Perosa Argentina, an Occitan t ...
and music by
Honegger
Arthur Honegger (; 10 March 1892 – 27 November 1955) was a Swiss composer who was born in France and lived a large part of his life in Paris. A member of Les Six, his best known work is probably ''Antigone'', composed between 1924 and 1927 to ...
, ''Angèle'', and ''La Femme du boulanger'', with
Raimu
Jules Auguste Muraire (18 December 1883 – 20 September 1946), whose stage name was Raimu, was a French actor. He is most famous for playing César in the 'Marseilles trilogy' ('' Marius'', '' Fanny'' and '' César'').
Life and career
Born in T ...
.
After World War II he planned on writing a sequence of ten novels inspired by
Balzac’s
La Comédie humaine
LA most frequently refers to Los Angeles, the second largest city in the United States.
La, LA, or L.A. may also refer to:
Arts and entertainment Music
* La (musical note), or A, the sixth note
* "L.A.", a song by Elliott Smith on ''Figure ...
, 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).
Henry Poulaille
Henry Poulaille (5 December 1896, Paris – 30 March 1980, Cachan) was a French writer and a pioneer of proletarian literature.
Biography
Early life and World War I
He was the son of Henri, an anarchist carpenter from Nantes, and Hortens ...
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. 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.
Great Britain
19th century
![Tressell](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Tressell.jpg)
Poet
John Clare
John Clare (13 July 1793 – 20 May 1864) was an English poet. The son of a farm labourer, he became known for his celebrations of the English countryside and sorrows at its disruption. His work underwent major re-evaluation in the late 20th ce ...
(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. 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. His biographer
Jonathan Bate
Sir Andrew Jonathan Bate, CBE, FBA, FRSL (born 26 June 1958), is a British academic, biographer, critic, broadcaster, poet, playwright, novelist and scholar. He specialises in Shakespeare, Romanticism and Ecocriticism. He is Foundation Profes ...
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".
A mid-
Victorian example of a working-class novel is
chartist Thomas Martin Wheeler's ''Sunshine and Shadows'', which was serialized in the ''Northern Star'' 1849–50. Another chartist writer was the shoemaker poet
Thomas Cooper, who, while in prison for making an inflammatory speech, "followed in the footsteps of
Bunyan and other radicals and wrote imaginatively about the themes of oppression and emancipation".
20th century
Walter Greenwood
Walter Greenwood (17 December 1903 – 13 September 1974) was an English novelist, best known for the socially influential novel ''Love on the Dole'' (1933).
Early life
Greenwood was born at 56 Ellor Street, his father's house and hairdres ...
's ''
Love on the Dole
''Love on the Dole'' is a novel by Walter Greenwood, about working-class poverty in 1930s Northern England. It has been made into both a play and a film.
The novel
Walter Greenwood's novel (1933) was written during the early 1930s as a respons ...
'' (1933) has been described as an "excellent example" of an English proletarian novel. 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 in
Salford
Salford () is a city and the largest settlement in the City of Salford metropolitan borough in Greater Manchester, England. In 2011, Salford had a population of 103,886. It is also the second and only other city in the metropolitan county afte ...
where Greenwood was born and brought up. The story begins around the time of the
General Strike
A general strike refers to a strike action in which participants cease all economic activity, such as working, to strengthen the bargaining position of a trade union or achieve a common social or political goal. They are organised by large co ...
of 1926, but its main action takes place in 1931.
Several working-class writers wrote about their experience of life in the
merchant navy, including
James Hanley,
Jim Phelan,
George Garrett, and
John 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 novella ''The Last Voyage'' (1931), in which stoker John Reilly, who is still working only because he lied about his age, now faces his last voyage. Although Reilly is in his mid-sixties he has a young family, who will have to live in future on his inadequate pension. 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!’” Among other works by Hanley are ''
Boy
A boy is a young male human. The term is commonly used for a child or an adolescent. When a male human reaches adulthood, he is described as a man.
Definition, etymology, and use
According to the ''Merriam-Webster Dictionary'', a boy is "a ...
'' (1931) and ''
The Furys'' (1935).
There were a number of
Welsh
Welsh may refer to:
Related to Wales
* Welsh, referring or related to Wales
* Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales
* Welsh people
People
* Welsh (surname)
* Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...
writers who wrote works based on their experiences as coal miners, including novelist (and playwright)
Jack Jones (1884–1970),
B.L. Coombes (1893-1974), novelists
Gwyn Thomas (1913–1981).
Lewis Jones (1897–1939), and
Gwyn Jones (1907–1999), and poet
Idris Davies
Idris Davies (6 January 1905 – 6 April 1953) was a Welsh poet. Born in Rhymney, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, he became a poet, originally writing in Welsh, but later writing exclusively in English.
He was the only poet to cover signific ...
(1905–53). Jack Jones was a miner's son from
Merthyr Tydfil
Merthyr Tydfil (; cy, Merthyr Tudful ) is the main town in Merthyr Tydfil County Borough, Wales, administered by Merthyr Tydfil County Borough Council. It is about north of Cardiff. Often called just Merthyr, it is said to be named after Tydf ...
who was himself a miner from the age of 12. He was active in the union movement and politics, starting with the
Communist Party
A communist party is a political party that seeks to realize the socio-economic goals of communism. The term ''communist party'' was popularized by the title of ''The Manifesto of the Communist Party'' (1848) by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. A ...
, 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 are ''
Rhondda Roundabout
''Rhondda Roundabout'' (1934) was the first published novel by the Welsh writer Jack Jones.''Rebirth of a Nation: Wales 1880-1980'', Kenneth O. Morgan, Oxford University Press, 1981
Plot
The story is set in the Rhondda Valley in the early 1930 ...
'' (1935) and ''Bidden 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 autobiographical ''These 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 of ''Cwmardy'' (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 to
Oxford
Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...
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 the
Rhondda Valley
Rhondda , or the Rhondda Valley ( cy, Cwm Rhondda ), is a former coalmining area in South Wales, historically in the county of Glamorgan. It takes its name from the River Rhondda, and embraces two valleys – the larger Rhondda Fawr 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 was
Gwyn Jones (1907–1999). He wrote about this world in novels and short stories, including ''Times Like These'' (1936) which explores the life of a working-class family during the
1926 miners' strike. The mining valleys produced a significant working-class poet in
Idris Davies
Idris Davies (6 January 1905 – 6 April 1953) was a Welsh poet. Born in Rhymney, near Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales, he became a poet, originally writing in Welsh, but later writing exclusively in English.
He was the only poet to cover signific ...
(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 poesm in Welsh. ''Gwalia Deserta'' (1938) is about the
Great Depression
The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...
, while the subject of ''The 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 of ''A Time To Laugh'' (1937), and
Menna Gallie, author of ''Strike for a Kingdom'' (1959) and ''The Small Mine'' (1962), while not working class, also wrote about life in the mining valleys of
South Wales
South Wales ( cy, De Cymru) is a loosely defined region of Wales bordered by England to the east and mid Wales to the north. Generally considered to include the historic counties of Glamorgan and Monmouthshire, south Wales extends westwards ...
. Novelist and poet
Christopher Meredith
Christopher Meredith Learned Society of Wales, FLSW (born 1954) is a poet, novelist, short story writer, and translator from Tredegar, Wales.
Biography
Meredith was born in Tredegar, Wales. His father, Emrys, from Tredegar, was a steelworker ...
(1954- ), the son of a steelworker and former coalminer and formerly a steelworker himself, writes out of Welsh working class experience, especially in his novel ''Shifts'' (1988), set in the 1970s against the decline of the steel industry, and in most of the short stories of ''Brief Lives'' (2018).
Harold Heslop
Harold Heslop (1 October 1898 – 10 November 1983) was an English writer, left-wing political activist, and coalminer, from near Bishop Auckland, County Durham. Heslop's first novel ''Goaf'' was published in 1926, but it was in a Russian transl ...
, author of the novel ''The Earth Beneath'' (1946) was another coal miner, but from the north-east of
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...
, as was
Sid Chaplin
Sid Chaplin (20 September 191611 January 1986) was an English writer whose works (novels, television screenplays, poetry and short stories) are mostly set in the north-east of England, in the 1940s and 1950s.
Biography
Chaplin was born into ...
, who wrote ''The Thin Seam'' (1949).
Both
Alan Sillitoe
Alan Sillitoe FRSL (4 March 192825 April 2010) was an English writer and one of the so-called "angry young men" of the 1950s. He disliked the label, as did most of the other writers to whom it was applied. He is best known for his debut novel ...
, ''
Saturday Night and Sunday Morning
''Saturday Night and Sunday Morning'' is the first novel by British author Alan Sillitoe and won the Author's Club First Novel Award.
It was adapted by Sillitoe into a 1960 film starring Albert Finney, directed by Karel Reisz, and in 1964 was ...
'' (1958) and
Stan Barstow
Stanley Barstow FRSL (28 June 1928 – 1 August 2011) was an English novelist.
Biography
Barstow was born in Horbury, near Wakefield in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His father was a coal miner and he attended Ossett Grammar School. He work ...
, ''
A Kind of Loving'' (1960), were working class writers associated with the so-called
Angry young men
The "angry young men" were a group of mostly working- and middle-class British playwrights and novelists who became prominent in the 1950s. The group's leading figures included John Osborne and Kingsley Amis; other popular figures included Jo ...
; they were also linked with
Kitchen sink realism
Kitchen sink realism (or kitchen sink drama) is a British cultural movement that developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s in theatre, art, novels, film and television plays, whose protagonists usually could be described as "angry young men" w ...
, 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, like
John Osborne
John James Osborne (12 December 1929 – 24 December 1994) was an English playwright, screenwriter and actor, known for his prose that criticized established social and political norms. The success of his 1956 play ''Look Back in Anger'' tra ...
and
John Braine
John Gerard Braine (13 April 1922 – 28 October 1986) was an English novelist. Braine is usually listed among the angry young men, a loosely defined group of English writers who emerged on the literary scene in the 1950s.
Biography
John Brain ...
, did not come from the working-class.
The following are some other important twentieth-century British working class novelists and novels:
Robert Tressell
Robert Noonan (17 April 1870 – 3 February 1911), born Robert Croker and best known by the pen name Robert Tressell, was an Irish writer best known for his novel ''The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists''.
Tressell spent his entire early adult w ...
, ''
The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists
''The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists'' (1914) is a semi-autobiographical novel by Irish house painter and sign writer Robert Noonan, who wrote the book in his spare time under the pen name Robert Tressell. Published after Tressell's death fro ...
'' (1914);
James C. Welsh, ''The Underworld'' (1920);
Ethel Carnie Holdsworth, ''This Slavery'' (1925);
Ellen Wilkinson
Ellen Cicely Wilkinson (8 October 1891 – 6 February 1947) was a British Labour Party politician who served as Minister of Education from July 1945 until her death. Earlier in her career, as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Jarrow, s ...
, ''
Clash'' (1929);
Lionel Britton, ''Hunger and Love'' (1931);
Lewis Grassic Gibbon
Lewis Grassic Gibbon was the pseudonym of James Leslie Mitchell (13 February 1901 – 7 February 1935), a Scottish writer. He was best known for ''A Scots Quair'', a trilogy set in the north-east of Scotland in the early 20th century, of which ...
''
A Scots Quair
''A Scots Quair'' is a trilogy by the Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon, describing the life of Chris Guthrie, a woman from the north-east of Scotland during the early 20th century.
It consists of three novels: '' Sunset Song'' (1932), ''Clou ...
'' (trilogy, 1932-4);
Barry Hines
Melvin Barry Hines, FRSL (30 June 1939 – 18 March 2016) was an English author, playwright and screenwriter. His novels and screenplays explore the political and economic struggles of working-class Northern England, particularly in his native W ...
, ''
A Kestrel for a Knave'' (1968);
William McIlvanney
William McIlvanney (25 November 1936 – 5 December 2015) was a Scottish novelist, short story writer, and poet. He was known as Gus by friends and acquaintances. McIlvanney was a champion of gritty yet poetic literature; his works ''Laidlaw'', ' ...
, ''
Docherty'' (1975);
Pat Barker
Patricia Mary W. Barker, (née Drake; born 8 May 1943) is an English writer and novelist. She has won many awards for her fiction, which centres on themes of memory, trauma, survival and recovery. Her work is described as direct, blunt and pl ...
, ''
Union Street'' (1982);
James Kelman
James Kelman (born 9 June 1946) is a Scottish novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist. His novel '' A Disaffection'' was shortlisted for the Booker Prize and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction in 1989. Kelman won ...
, ''
The Busconductor Hines'' (1984);
Irvine Welsh
Irvine Welsh (born 27 September 1958) is a Scottish novelist, playwright and short story writer. His 1993 novel '' Trainspotting'' was made into a film of the same name. He has also written plays and screenplays, and directed several short fil ...
, ''
Trainspotting'' (1993).
Edward Bond is an important working-class dramatist and his play ''
Saved'' (1965) became one of the best known
cause célèbre
A cause célèbre (,''Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged'', 12th Edition, 2014. S.v. "cause célèbre". Retrieved November 30, 2018 from https://www.thefreedictionary.com/cause+c%c3%a9l%c3%a8bre ,''Random House Kernerman Webs ...
s 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.
Ireland
Notable Irish proletarian writers of the early 20th century included
Liam O’Flaherty and
Seán O'Casey
Seán O'Casey ( ga, Seán Ó Cathasaigh ; born John Casey; 30 March 1880 – 18 September 1964) was an Irish dramatist and memoirist. A committed socialist, he was the first Irish playwright of note to write about the Dublin working classes.
...
.
Leslie Daiken
Leslie Herbert Daiken (29 June 1912 – 15 August 1964) was an Irish-born advertising copywriter, editor, and writer on children's toys and games, in his youth in the 1930s a poet active in leftist politics and editor of the duplicated circular '' ...
,
Charles Donnelly and
Peadar O'Donnell
Peadar O'Donnell ( ga, Peadar Ó Domhnaill; 22 February 1893 – 13 May 1986) was one of the foremost radicals of 20th-century Ireland. O'Donnell became prominent as an Irish republican, socialist activist, politician and writer.
Early life
Pe ...
are also well-known.
Modern working-class authors include
Karl Parkinson
Karl Parkinson is an Irish author based in Dublin. He has published three collections of poetry, a novel, and a short story collection.
Writing career
Parkinson has published three collections of poetry, ''Litany of the City'' (Wurmpress 2013) ...
,
Kevin Barry
Kevin Gerard Barry (20 January 1902 – 1 November 1920) was an Irish Republican Army (IRA) soldier who was executed by the British Government during the Irish War of Independence. He was sentenced to death for his part in an attack upon a Brit ...
and
Roddy Doyle
Roddy Doyle (born 8 May 1958) is an Irish novelist, dramatist and screenwriter. He is the author of eleven novels for adults, eight books for children, seven plays and screenplays, and dozens of short stories. Several of his books have been ma ...
, .
Japan
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's ''Miners'' (坑夫) and Karoku Miyachi's ''Tomizō the Vagrant'' (放浪者富蔵), as well as works dealing with military experiences which were also associated with the
Taishō democracy, the emergence of which allowed for the development of proletarian literature in Japan. In 1921,
Ōmi Komaki
was the pen-name of a scholar and translator of French literature in Taishō and Shōwa period Japan. His real name was Komaki Ōmiya.
Early life
Komaki was born in Tsuchizaki-Minato town, Akita prefecture, as the son of a politician. He dro ...
and Hirofumi Kaneko founded the literary magazine ''The 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 the
1923 Great Kantō earthquake
The struck the Kantō Plain on the main Japanese island of Honshū at 11:58:44 JST (02:58:44 UTC) on Saturday, September 1, 1923. Varied accounts indicate the duration of the earthquake was between four and ten minutes. Extensive firestorms an ...
.
In 1924, ''Literary Front'' (文芸戦線) magazine was launched by Hatsunosuke Hirabayashi and Suekichi Aono, becoming the main magazine of the Japanese proletarian literature movement. New writing such as
Yoshiki Hayama
was a Japanese author associated with the Japanese proletarian literature
Proletarian literature refers here to the literature created by left-wing writers mainly for the class-consciousness, class-conscious proletariat. Though the ''Encyclopæ ...
's ''The Prostitute'' (淫売婦) and
Denji Kuroshima
was a Japanese author.
Personal life
A largely self-taught writer of humble social origins, Kuroshima was born on Shōdoshima in the Inland Sea and went to Tokyo to work and study. Conscripted into the army in 1919, he was sent to fight in a do ...
's ''A Herd of Pigs'' (豚群) also began to appear in the magazine.
In 1928, the Japanese Proletarian Arts Federation (全日本無産者芸術連盟, Nippona Artista Proleta Federacio, known as NAPF) 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 called
Takiji Kobayashi
was a Japanese writer of proletarian literature.
He is best known for his short novel '' Kanikōsen'', or ''Crab Cannery Ship'', published in 1929. It tells the story of the hard life of cannery workers, fishermen and seamen on board a cannery ...
and Sunao Tokunaga, and the organization's newsletter ''
Battleflag'' (戦旗, ''Senki'') published many influential works such as Kobayashi's ''
The Crab Cannery Ship
''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...
'' (蟹工船) and ''March 15, 1928'' (一九二八年三月十五日) and Tokunaga's ''A Street Without Sun'' (太陽のない街). Another important magazine was ''Reconstruction'' (改造) which published writings from
Ryunosuke Akutagawa and
Yuriko Miyamoto
was a Japanese novelist, short-story writer, social activist, and literary critic active during the Taishō and early Shōwa periods of Japan. She is best known for her autobiographical fiction and involvement in proletarian and women's libe ...
, who had just returned from the
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen national ...
. Other more renowned publishers like ''Chūo Kōron'' (Central Review), ''Kaizō'' (Reconstruction), and ''Miyako Shinbun'' also published works by proletarian authors, even those who were members of the Communist party.
Author Korehito Kurehara traveled secretly to the Soviet Union in 1930 for the
Profintern
The Red International of Labor Unions (russian: Красный интернационал профсоюзов, translit=Krasnyi internatsional profsoyuzov, RILU), commonly known as the Profintern, was an international body established by the Comm ...
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 as KOPF), incorporating other cultural organizations, such as musicians and filmmakers. KOPF produced various magazines including ''Working 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 the
March 15 incident
The was a crackdown on socialists and communists by the Japanese government in 1928. Among those who were arrested in the incident was the Marxist economist Kawakami Hajime.
Background
Although the Japan Communist Party had been outlawed and for ...
. Some authors, such as Takiji Kobayashi were tortured to death by police, while others were forced to
renounce their socialist beliefs.
''
Kanikōsen'' (1929) is a short novel by
Takiji Kobayashi
was a Japanese writer of proletarian literature.
He is best known for his short novel '' Kanikōsen'', or ''Crab Cannery Ship'', published in 1929. It tells the story of the hard life of cannery workers, fishermen and seamen on board a cannery ...
(translated into English as ''The Cannery Boat'' (1933), ''The Factory Ship'' (1973) and ''The Crab Cannery Ship'' (2013)), which depicts the lives of Japanese crab fishermen. Told from a
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
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 as
manga
Manga (Japanese: 漫画 ) are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long prehistory in earlier Japanese art. The term ''manga'' is u ...
.
Korea
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 include ''The Peasant Cho˘ng To-ryong'' by Yi Ki-yo˘ng, ''A Transitional Period'' by Han So˘r-ya, ''Rat Fire'' by So˘hwa, and ''Hometown'' by Kohyang.
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 writer
Song 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
During the Proletarian Movement, there was an urge from Japanese colonialists to “convert” Koreans away from communism. This conversion system was called ''cho˘nhyang.'' ''Cho˘nhyang'' sparked numerous works from various authors such as ''The 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, and ''Management'' by Kim Nam-ch’o˘n, all published between the years 1939 and 1940.
Romania
Panait Istrati
Panait Istrati (; sometimes rendered as ''Panaït Istrati''; August 10, 1884 – April 16, 1935) was a Romanian working class writer, who wrote in French and Romanian, nicknamed ''The Maxim Gorky of the Balkans''. Istrati appears to be the ...
(1884–1935), was a
Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eastern, and Southeast Europe, Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to the west, S ...
n working class writer, the son of the laundress and of a
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
smuggler
Smuggling is the illegal transportation of objects, substances, information or people, such as out of a house or buildings, into a prison, or across an international border, in violation of applicable laws or other regulations.
There are various ...
. He studied in primary school for six years in
Baldovinești
Baldovinești is a commune in Olt County, Oltenia, Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe. It borders Bulgaria to the south, Ukraine to the north, Hungary to ...
, 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.
Istrati's first attempts at writing date from around 1907 when he started sending pieces to the
socialist
Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...
periodicals in Romania, debuting with the article, ''Hotel Regina'' in ''
România Muncitoare
''România Muncitoare'' ("Working Romania" or "Laborer Romania") was a socialist newspaper, published in Bucharest, Romania
Romania ( ; ro, România ) is a country located at the crossroads of Central Europe, Central, Eastern Europe, Eas ...
''. 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
May Day is a European festival of ancient origins marking the beginning of summer, usually celebrated on 1 May, around halfway between the spring equinox and summer solstice. Festivities may also be held the night before, known as May Eve. T ...
"). He also contributed pieces to other
leftist
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
newspapers such as ''Dimineața'', ''
Adevărul
''Adevărul'' (; meaning "The Truth", formerly spelled ''Adevĕrul'') is a Romanian daily newspaper, based in Bucharest. Founded in Iași, in 1871, and reestablished in 1888, in Bucharest, it was the main left-wing press venue to be published dur ...
'', and ''Viața Socială''. In 1910, he was involved in organizing a strike in Brăila. He went to
Bucharest
Bucharest ( , ; ro, București ) is the capital and largest city of Romania, as well as its cultural, industrial, and financial centre. It is located in the southeast of the country, on the banks of the Dâmbovița River, less than north of ...
,
Istanbul
Istanbul ( , ; tr, İstanbul ), formerly known as Constantinople ( grc-gre, Κωνσταντινούπολις; la, Constantinopolis), is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, serving as the country's economic, ...
,
Cairo
Cairo ( ; ar, القاهرة, al-Qāhirah, ) is the capital of Egypt and its largest city, home to 10 million people. It is also part of the largest urban agglomeration in Africa, the Arab world and the Middle East: The Greater Cairo metro ...
,
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
,
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
(1913–1914), and
Switzerland
). Swiss law does not designate a ''capital'' as such, but the federal parliament and government are installed in Bern, while other federal institutions, such as the federal courts, are in other cities (Bellinzona, Lausanne, Luzern, Neuchâtel ...
, where he settled for a while, trying to cure his
tuberculosis
Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
). 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. In
1923 Istrati's story ''Kyra Kyralina'' (or ''Chira Chiralina'') was published with a preface by the famous French novelist
Romaine Rolland. It became the first in his ''Adrien Zograffi''
literary cycle
A literary cycle is a group of stories focused on common figures, often (though not necessarily) based on mythical figures or loosely on historical ones. Cycles which deal with an entire country are sometimes referred to as matters. A fictional c ...
. Rolland was fascinated with Istrati's adventurous life, urging him to write more and publishing parts of his work in ''Clarté'', the journal that Rolland and
Henri Barbusse
Henri Barbusse (; 17 May 1873 – 30 August 1935) was a French novelist and a member of the French Communist Party. He was a lifelong friend of Albert Einstein.
Life
The son of a French father and an English mother, Barbusse was born in Asnièr ...
ran.
[Roger Dadoun.] The next major work by Istrati was the
novel
A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...
''Codine''.
Russia and the Soviet Union
An important movement In the first years of the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...
,
Proletkult
Proletkult ( rus, Пролетку́льт, p=prəlʲɪtˈkulʲt), a portmanteau of the Russian words "proletarskaya kultura" (proletarian culture), was an experimental Soviet artistic institution that arose in conjunction with the Russian Revolu ...
, was an effort to encourage literacy. This was something quite different from the later, traditional and realist proletarian novel of the
Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin (born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili; – 5 March 1953) was a Georgian revolutionary and Soviet political leader who led the Soviet Union from 1924 until his death in 1953. He held power as General Secretar ...
years.
In the 1930s
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of idealized realistic art that was developed in the Soviet Union and was the official style in that country between 1932 and 1988, as well as in other socialist countries after World War II. Socialist realism is ch ...
became the predominant trend in Russia.
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov (russian: link=no, Алексе́й Макси́мович Пешко́в; – 18 June 1936), popularly known as Maxim Gorky (russian: Макси́м Го́рький, link=no), was a Russian writer and social ...
was declared the founder of socrealism, and his pre-revolutionary works about the Revolutionary proletariat (the novel ''
Mother
]
A mother is the female parent of a child. A woman may be considered a mother by virtue of having given childbirth, birth, by raising a child who may or may not be her biological offspring, or by supplying her ovum for fertilisation in the cas ...
'' and the play ''
Enemies (play), Enemies'') 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.
However, he did not come from a working-class family and neither did another prominent writer in the early years after the
Russian Revolution
The Russian Revolution was a period of Political revolution (Trotskyism), political and social revolution that took place in the former Russian Empire which began during the First World War. This period saw Russia abolish its monarchy and ad ...
of 1917,
Alexander Ostrovsky
Alexander Nikolayevich Ostrovsky (russian: Алекса́ндр Никола́евич Остро́вский; ) was a Russian playwright, generally considered the greatest representative of the Russian realistic period. The author of 47 origina ...
.
However,
Nikolay Ostrovsky
Nikolai Alexeevich Ostrovsky (russian: Никола́й Алексе́евич Остро́вский; uk, Мико́ла Олексі́йович Остро́вський; 29 September 1904 – 22 December 1936) was a Soviet Union, Soviet socia ...
is an important writer, of the early Soviet era, from a working-class family. His novel ''
How the Steel Was Tempered
''How the Steel Was Tempered'' (russian: Как закалялась сталь, ''Kak zakalyalas' stal) or ''The Making of a Hero'', is a socialist realist novel written by Nikolai Ostrovsky (1904–1936). With 36.4 million copies sold, it is o ...
'' (1932) has been among the most successful works of
Russian literature
Russian literature refers to the literature of Russia and its émigrés and to Russian language, Russian-language literature. The roots of Russian literature can be traced to the Middle Ages, when epics and chronicles in Old East Slavic were c ...
, with tens of millions of copies printed in many languages around the world.
The book is a fictionalized autobiography of Ostrovsky's life, who had a difficult working-class childhood and became a
Komsomol
The All-Union Leninist Young Communist League (russian: link=no, Всесоюзный ленинский коммунистический союз молодёжи (ВЛКСМ), ), usually known as Komsomol (; russian: Комсомол, links=n ...
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.
Leonid Leonov
Leonid Maximovich Leonov (russian: Леони́д Макси́мович Лео́нов; — 8 August 1994) was a Soviet novelist and playwright of socialist realism. His works have been compared with Dostoyevsky's deep psychological torment.
...
(1899 — 1994) was a Soviet novelist and playwright. His novel ''The Russian Forest'' (1953) was acclaimed by the authorities as a model Soviet book on
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and received the
Lenin Prize, but its implication that the Soviet regime had cut down "the symbol of Old Russian culture" caused some nervousness, and
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev s ...
reminded the author that "not all trees are useful ... from time to time the forest must be thinned."
Sweden
In Sweden proletarian literature became known in the 1910s. Early pioneers were
Dan Andersson
Dan Andersson (6 April 1888 in Ludvika – 16 September 1920 in Stockholm)[Dan Andersson](_blank)
' ...
and
Martin Koch. Proletarian literature became widely known in the 1930s when a group of non-academic, self-taught writers like
Ivar Lo-Johansson
Ivar Lo-Johansson (23 February 1901 – 11 April 1990) was a Swedish writer of the proletarian school. His autobiographical 1979 memoir, ''Pubertet'' (''Puberty''), won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1979.
Biography
Born Ivar Johanss ...
,
Eyvind Johnson
Eyvind Johnson (29 July 1900 – 25 August 1976) was a Swedish novelist and short story writer. Regarded as the most groundbreaking novelist in modern Swedish literature he became a member of the Swedish Academy in 1957 and shared the 1974 Nob ...
,
Jan Fridegård
Jan Fridegård, born Johan Fridolf "Fride" Johansson, (14 June 1897 – 8 September 1968) was a Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North ...
and
Harry Martinson
Harry Martinson (6May 190411February 1978) was a Swedish writer, poet and former sailor. In 1949 he was elected into the Swedish Academy. He was awarded a joint 1974 Nobel Prize in Literature, Nobel Prize in Literature in 1974 together with fellow ...
appeared writing about the working-class, often from the perspective of a young man.
[De svenska arbetarförfattarna](_blank)
Litteraturhistoria.se (in Swedish)
Swedish proletarian literature is perhaps most closely associated with Ivar Lo-Johansson, who wrote about the lives of
statare
''Statare'' were contract-workers in Swedish agriculture who, contrary to other farmhands, were expected to be married, were provided with a simple dwelling for their family, and instead of eating at the servants' table were paid in kind with foo ...
in his acclaimed novel ''Godnatt, jord'' ("Goodnight, earth", 1933) and in many short stories, collected in the books ''Statarna'' (1936–1937) and ''Jordproletärerna'' ("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 with ''Jag Lars Hård'' ("I Lars Hård", 1935). His first novel ''En 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
Moa Martinson, born Helga Maria Swarts sometimes spelt Swartz, (2November 18905August 1964) was one of Sweden's most noted authors of proletarian literature. Her ambition was to change society with her authorship and to portray the conditions of ...
wrote about her own experiences of poor farm life as a wife and mother in several novels.
Rudolf Värnlund depicted life in
Stockholm
Stockholm () is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in Sweden by population, largest city of Sweden as well as the List of urban areas in the Nordic countries, largest urban area in Scandinavia. Approximately 980,000 people liv ...
from a proletarian perspective in several novels, and in 1932 his play ''Den heliga familjen'' ("The holy family") was the first play by a proletarian writer that was staged at the national Swedish theatre
Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern
The Royal Dramatic Theatre ( sv, Kungliga Dramatiska Teatern, colloquially ''Dramaten'') is Sweden's national stage for "spoken drama", founded in 1788. Around one thousand shows are put on annually on the theatre's five running stages.
The the ...
.
Lars Ahlin debuted in 1944 with ''Tåbb 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 the
Swedish Academy
The Swedish Academy ( sv, Svenska Akademien), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III of Sweden, Gustav III, is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish lang ...
and shared the
Nobel prize in literature
)
, image = Nobel Prize.png
, caption =
, awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature
, presenter = Swedish Academy
, holder = Annie Ernaux (2022)
, location = Stockholm, Sweden
, year = 1901
, ...
in 1974.
Proletarian literature in Scandinavia is also represented by writers such as the dane
Martin Andersen Nexø
Martin Andersen Nexø (26 June 1869 – 1 June 1954) was a Danish writer. He was one of the authors in the Modern Breakthrough movement in Danish art and literature. He was a socialist throughout his life and during the second world war moved to ...
, Norwegian
Johan Falkberget
Johan Falkberget, born Johan Petter Lillebakken, (30 September 1879 – 5 April 1967) was a Norwegian author. He was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Life and career
Johan Falkberget was born on the Lillebakken farm in the Rugl ...
and
Väinö Linna
Väinö Linna (; 20 December 1920 – 21 April 1992) was a Finnish author. He gained literary fame with his third novel, ''Tuntematon sotilas'' ( ''The Unknown Soldier'', published in 1954), and consolidated his position with the trilogy ''Tää ...
from Finland.
United States
The most important American working-class writers gathered in the First American Writers Congress of 1935. The
League of American Writers
The League of American Writers was an association of American novelists, playwrights, poets, journalists, and literary critics launched by the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) in 1935. The group included Communist Party members, and so-called " fell ...
was backed by the
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revo ...
. Among the famous international writers who attended the Congress were Georg Fink (pseudonym of the German writer
Kurt Münzer),
Mike Gold
Michael Gold (April 12, 1894 – May 14, 1967) was the pen-name of Jewish American writer Itzok Isaac Granich. A lifelong communist, Gold was a novelist and literary critic. His semi-autobiographical novel '' Jews Without Money'' (1930) was a bes ...
of New York (both of whom were Jewish),
José Revueltas
José Revueltas Sánchez (November 20, 1914 in Santiago Papasquiaro, Durango – April 14, 1976 in Mexico City) was a Mexican writer, essayist, and political activist. He was part of an important artistic family that included his siblings Silve ...
of Mexico,
Nicomedes Guzmán of Chile,
Jorge Icaza
Jorge Icaza Coronel (July 10, 1906 – May 26, 1978), commonly referred to as Jorge Icaza, was a writer from Ecuador, best known for his novel '' Huasipungo'', which brought attention to the exploitation of Ecuador's indigenous people by Ecuadoria ...
of Ecuador, and numerous others.
In the United States,
Mike Gold
Michael Gold (April 12, 1894 – May 14, 1967) was the pen-name of Jewish American writer Itzok Isaac Granich. A lifelong communist, Gold was a novelist and literary critic. His semi-autobiographical novel '' Jews Without Money'' (1930) was a bes ...
, author of ''
Jews Without Money'', was the first to promote proletarian literature in
Max Eastman
Max Forrester Eastman (January 4, 1883 – March 25, 1969) was an American writer on literature, philosophy and society, a poet and a prominent political activist. Moving to New York City for graduate school, Eastman became involved with radical ...
's magazine ''
The Liberator'' and later in ''
The New Masses
''New Masses'' (1926–1948) was an American Marxist magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA. It succeeded both ''The Masses'' (1912–1917) and ''The Liberator''. ''New Masses'' was later merged into '' Masses & Mainstream'' (19 ...
''. The Communist party newspaper, ''
The Daily Worker
The ''Daily Worker'' was a newspaper published in New York City by the Communist Party USA, a formerly Comintern-affiliated organization. Publication began in 1924. While it generally reflected the prevailing views of the party, attempts were m ...
'' also published some literature, as did numerous other magazines, including ''The Anvil'', edited by
Jack Conroy
John Wesley Conroy (December 5, 1899 - February 28, 1990) was a leftist American writer,"Jack Conroy." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 29 Oct. 2009, also known as a Worker-Writer,AP, . "Jack Conroy, Novelist, 91." ...
, ''Blast'', and ''
Partisan Review
''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA–affiliated John ...
''.
Other examples of American proletarian writing include
B. Traven
B. Traven (; Bruno Traven in some accounts) was the pen name of a novelist, presumed to be German, whose real name, nationality, date and place of birth and details of biography are all subject to dispute. One certainty about Traven's life is ...
, ''
The Death Ship
''The Death Ship'' (German title: ''Das Totenschiff'') is a novel by the pseudonymous author known as B. Traven. Originally published in German in 1926, and in English in 1934, it was Traven's first major success and is still the author's secon ...
'' (1926) (though it is presumed that Traven was born in Germany);
Agnes Smedley
Agnes Smedley (February 23, 1892 – May 6, 1950) was an American journalist, writer, and activist who supported the Indian Independence Movement and the Chinese Communist Revolution. Raised in a poverty-stricken miner's family in Missouri and Co ...
, ''
Daughter of Earth
''Daughter of Earth'' (1929) is an autobiographical novel by the American author and journalist Agnes Smedley. The novel chronicles the years of Marie Rogers's tumultuous childhood, struggles in relationships with men (both physical and emotional) ...
'' (1929);
Edward Dahlberg
Edward Dahlberg (July 22, 1900 – February 27, 1977) was an American novelist, essayist, and autobiographer.
Background
Edward Dahlberg was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Elizabeth Dahlberg. Together, mother and son led a vagabond existence ...
, ''Bottom Dogs'' (1929);
Jack Conroy
John Wesley Conroy (December 5, 1899 - February 28, 1990) was a leftist American writer,"Jack Conroy." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2009. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 29 Oct. 2009, also known as a Worker-Writer,AP, . "Jack Conroy, Novelist, 91." ...
, ''
The Disinherited'' (1933);
James T. Farrell
James Thomas Farrell (February 27, 1904 – August 22, 1979) was an American novelist, short-story writer and poet.
He is most remembered for the ''Studs Lonigan'' trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and a television series in 1979.
B ...
, ''
Studs Lonigan
''Studs Lonigan'' is a novel trilogy by American author James T. Farrell: ''Young Lonigan'' (1932), ''The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan'' (1934), and ''Judgment Day'' (1935). In 1998, the Modern Library ranked the Studs Lonigan trilogy 29th on i ...
'' (a trilogy, 1932-5);
Robert Cantwell
Robert Emmett Cantwell (January 31, 1908 – December 8, 1978), known as Robert Cantwell, was a novelist and critic. His first novel, ''Laugh and Lie Down'' (1931) is an early example, twenty years before Jack Kerouac, of the American classic ge ...
, ''The Land of Plenty'' (1934);
Henry Roth, ''
Call It Sleep
''Call It Sleep'' is a 1934 novel by Henry Roth. The book is about a young boy growing up in the Jewish immigrant ghetto of New York's Lower East Side in the early 20th century.
Although it earned acclaim, the book sold poorly and was out of ...
'' (1934);
Meridel Le Sueur
Meridel Le Sueur (February 22, 1900, Murray, Iowa – November 14, 1996, Hudson, Wisconsin) was an American writer associated with the proletarian literature movement of the 1930s and 1940s. Born as Meridel Wharton, she assumed the name of her mot ...
, ''Salute to Spring'' (1940) and
Tillie Olsen
Tillie may refer to:
__NOTOC__ Places in the United States
* Tillie, Kentucky, an unincorporated community
* Tillie, Pennsylvania, a former populated place
* Tillie Creek, California
People
* Tillie (name), a given name and surname
Animal
* Tilli ...
, ''
Yonnondio
''Yonnondio: From the Thirties'' is a novel by American author Tillie Olsen which was published in 1974 but written in the 1930s. The novel details the lives of the Holbrook family, depicting their struggle to survive during the 1920s. ''Yonnon ...
'' (1930s, published 1974).
Writers like
John Steinbeck
John Ernst Steinbeck Jr. (; February 27, 1902 – December 20, 1968) was an American writer and the 1962 Nobel Prize in Literature winner "for his realistic and imaginative writings, combining as they do sympathetic humor and keen social ...
,
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (; August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm mora ...
, and
John Dos Passos
John Roderigo Dos Passos (; January 14, 1896 – September 28, 1970) was an American novelist, most notable for his ''U.S.A.'' trilogy.
Born in Chicago, Dos Passos graduated from Harvard College in 1916. He traveled widely as a young man, visit ...
, who wrote about the working class, but who came from more well-to-do backgrounds, are not included here.
See also
*
American proletarian poetry movement
Proletarian poetry is a political poetry movement that developed in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s that expresses the class-conscious perspectives of the working-class. Such poems are either explicitly Marxist or at least socialis ...
*
Bertolt Brecht
Eugen Berthold Friedrich Brecht (10 February 1898 – 14 August 1956), known professionally as Bertolt Brecht, was a German theatre practitioner, playwright, and poet. Coming of age during the Weimar Republic, he had his first successes as a pl ...
*
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing (; 22 October 1919 – 17 November 2013) was a British-Zimbabwean novelist. She was born to British parents in Iran, where she lived until 1925. Her family then moved to Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), where she remain ...
*
Political cinema
*
Political poetry
Political poetry brings together politics and poetry. According to "The Politics of Poetry"by David Orr, poetry and politics connect through expression and feeling, although both of them are matters of persuasion. Political poetry connects to peop ...
*
Political drama
A political drama can describe a play, film or TV program that has a political component, whether reflecting the author's political opinion, or describing a politician or series of political events.
Dramatists who have written political dramas in ...
*
Social criticism#In literature and music
References
Further reading
Anthologies
* ''The American Writer's Congress''. edited by Henry Hart. International Publishers, New York 1935.
* ''Proletarian Literature in the United States: an Anthology''. edited by Granville Hicks, Joseph North, Paul Peters, Isidor Schneider and Alan Calmer; with a critical introduction by Joseph Freeman. International Publishers, New York 1935.
Joseph Freeman: ''Introduction'' to Granville Hicks and others (editors): ''Proletarian Literature in the United States'', International Publishers, New York 1935
* ''Proletarian Writers of the Thirties''. edited by David Madden, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1968
Studies
* Aaron, Daniel: ''Writers on the Left''. Harcourt, New York 1961.
* Bowen-Stuyk, Heather & Norma Field. ''For Dignity, Justice, and Revolution: An Anthology of Japanese Proletarian Literature''. University of Chicago Press, 2015.
* Brown, Edward James. ''Russian Literature Since the Revolution''. London: Collier Books, 1965.
* Chapman, Rosemary. ''Henry Poulaille and Proletarian Literature'' 1920–1939. Amsterdam & Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1992.
* Coiner, Constance. ''Better Red: The Writing and Resistance of Tillie Olsen and Meridel Le Sueur''. Oxford University Press, 2000.
* Del Valle Alcalá, Roberto. ''British Working-Class Fiction: Narratives of Refusal and the Struggle Against Work''. London: Bloomsbury, 2016.
* Denning, Michael. ''The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century''. Verso, 1996.
* Empson, William. "Proletarian Literature", in ''Some Versions of Pastoral'', pp. 3–23. New York: New Directions Paperbacks, 1965.
* Ferrero, Mario. ''Nicomedes Guzmán y la Generación del 38''. Santiago de Chile: Ediciones Mar Afuera, 1982.
* Foley, Barbara. ''Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929-1941 ''. Duke University Press, 1993.
* Fox, Pamela. ''Class Fictions: Shame and Resistance in the British Working Class Novel, 1890-1945''. Duke University Press, 1994.
* Freeman, Joseph. ''Introduction to Proletarian Literature in the United States''. Granville Hicks, et al., eds. New York: International Publishers, 1935.
* Hawthorn, Jeremy. ''The British Working Class Novel in the Twentieth Century''. Hodder Arnold, 1984.
* Haywood, Ian. ''Working-Class Fiction: from Chartism to "Trainspotting"''. Plymouth: Nortcote House, 1997.
* Keating, Peter. The Working Classes in Victorian Fiction. London: Routledge, 1971.
* Klaus, H. Gustav (Ed). ''The Socialist Novel In Britain''. Brighton: Harvester, 1982. 0-7108-0340-0.
* Klaus, H. Gustav. ''The Literature of Labour: Two Hundred Years of Working-Class Writing''. Brighton: Harvester, 1985. .
* Klaus, H. Gustav (ed.). ''The Rise of Socialist Fiction 1880-1940''. Brighton: Harvester, 1987.
* Klaus, H. Gustav & Stephen Knight (Eds). ''British Industrial Fictions''. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000. {{ISBN, 0708315968.
* Lukács, György. ''Studies in European Realism''. New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1964.
* Murphy, James F. ''The Proletarian Episode in Russian Literature, 1928-1932. Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press 1991.
* Nekola, Charlotte & Rabinowitz, Paula (Eds). ''Writing Red: An Anthology of American Women Writers, 1930-1940''. New York: The Feminist Press at The City University, 1988.
* Nelson, Cary. ''Revolutionary Memory: Recovering the Poetry of the American Left''. Routledge, 2001.
* Park, Sunyoung. ''The Proletarian Wave: Literature and Leftist Culture in Colonial Korea, 1910-1945''. Harvard University Press, 2015.
* Pearson, Lon. ''Nicomedes Guzman Nicomedes may refer to:
* Nicomedes (mathematician), ancient Greek mathematician who discovered the conchoid
*Nicomedes of Sparta, regent during the youth of King Pleistoanax, commanded the Spartan army at the Battle of Tanagra (457 BC)
* Saint Nic ...
: Proletarian author in Chile's literary generation of 1938''. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1964.
* Promis jeda José. ''La Novela Chilena del Ùltimo Siglo''. Santiago: La Noria, 1993.
* Rabinowitz, Paula. ''Labor and Desire: Women's Revolutionary Fiction in Depression America''. University of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill 1991.
* Rideout, Walter B. ''The Radical Novel in the United States: 1900–1954''. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1956.
* Sinyavsky, Andrei (Abram Tertz). ''On Socialist Realism''. Introduction by Czeslaw Milosz. Trans. by George Dennis. New York: Pantheon Books, 1993.
* Smith, David. ''Socialist Propaganda in the Twentieth Century British Novel'', Macmillan, 1978
* Steinberg, Mark. ''Proletarian Imagination: Self, Modernity, and the Sacred in Russia, 1910–1925''. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2002. (On proletarian literature in late-imperial and early Soviet Russia)
* Vicinus, Martha. ''The Industrial Muse: A Study of Nineteenth-Century British Working-Class Literature''. London: Croom Helm, 1974.
* Wald, Alan M. ''Writing from the Left''. Verso, 1984.
* Wald, Alan M. ''Exiles from a Future Time''. University of North Carolina Press, 2002.
Articles
* Eric Homberger, "Proletarian Literature and the John Reed Clubs, 1929–1935", ''Journal of American Studies'', vol. 13, no. 2 (Aug. 1979), pp. 221–244
In JSTOR
* Victor Serge and Anna Aschenbach, "Is Proletarian Literature Possible?" ''Yale French Studies'', No. 39 (1967), pp. 137–145
In JSTOR
* R.W. Steadman, "A Critique of Proletarian Literature", ''North American Review'', vol. 247, no. 1 (Spring 1939), pp. 142–152
In JSTOR
External links
www.rebelgraphics.org/
Ruth Barraclough talks about Factory Girl Literature in Korea at University of Minnesota, October, 2012
Academic works about politics
Marxist writers
Political art
Political literature
Proletariat