Working Class literature

[adam3132]

Who was (in their opinion) the first person who wrote about society from a genuine working class perspective ?

[heathfield]

There's one that springs to mind. In 1907, Robert Noonan, a skilled but unemployed painter and decorator, wrote 'The Ragged-Trousered Philanthropist' under the pseudonym of Robert Tressel. The book became popular world-wide, particularly in the 1930s, and is credited with helping the Labour Party win the General Election of 1945.

'I designed to show the conditions resulting from poverty and unemployment: to expose the futility of the measures taken to deal with them...'

[starmack]

The work of the Chartists in 19th century, should not be overlooked either and later on, in 1930s, JB Priestley's "English Journey" has some hard observations to make.....

[sddsddean]

Don't know if it was the first, but 'Down and Out in Paris and London' is a brilliant book by George Orwell.

[Bev2007]

I'll suggest Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy 1895.

Pretty effective at showing the frustrations and Victorian inability to escape the class you were born into.

Although Thomas Hardy himself managed to do that!

[Thicko2006]

Charles Dickens was from a working class background.

[rabet]

I agree that 'Down and Out in Paris and London' is an interesting book, but as George Orwell was educated at Eton College he may have found a 'working-class perspective' difficult to achieve. His later book 'The Road to Wigan Pier' is perhaps a more successful depiction, but many would say that his Socialist beliefs led him to romanticize the working class and take an overly sentimental view of some aspects of working-class life.

[vehelpfulguy]

Surely Charles Dickens. His wiki entry says

Dickens's novels were, among other things, works of social commentary. He was a fierce critic of the poverty and social stratification of Victorian society.

Dickens's second novel, Oliver Twist (1839), shocked readers with its images of poverty and crime and was responsible for the clearing of the actual London slum that was the basis of the story's Jacob's Island. In addition, with the character of the tragic prostitute, Nancy, Dickens "humanised" such women for the reading public; women who were regarded as "unfortunates," inherently immoral casualties of the Victorian class/economic system.

Bleak House and Little Dorrit elaborated expansive critiques of the Victorian institutional apparatus: the interminable lawsuits of the Court of Chancery that destroyed people's lives in Bleak House and a dual attack in Little Dorrit on inefficient, corrupt patent offices and unregulated market speculation.

[spudmuffa]

Good question. I believe it was Moses. Hope this helps.

[adam3132]

Thank you everyone

[andynunn]

how about william blake. not sure what this one is, could be america. "Let the slave grinding at the mill, run out into the fields and laugh in the bright air, let the inchained soul shut up in darkness and in sighing who's face has never seen a smile in thirty weary years, rise and look out his dungeon doors are open, and let his wife and children return from the oppressors scurge, they look behind at every step and believe it is a dream, singing the sun has left its blackness and found a fresher morning,and the fair moon rejoices in a clear and cloudless night for empire is no more and now the lion and wolf shall cease,for everything that lives is holy.