This book offers a pioneering study of the national, transnational, and international dimensions of working-class literature. It explores both the historically and geographically varied nature of the relationship between working-class literatures and national ‘canons’, and the importance of international and transnational exchanges in the development of working-class literature. Through a series of detailed case studies (its sixteen essays analyse working-class literatures from the early nineteenth century to the present day and cover thirteen countries across three continents) this collection not only analyses the factors which lead to the incorporation or exclusion of working-class literature from a given national ‘canon’, but also traces the various ways in which working-class literatures participate in international networks of exchange. With its wide historical range, extensive geographical coverage and broad definition of working-class literature, which includes samba poetry as well as socialist realism, this collection charts new territory for the study of working-class literature.
