Why is working-class writing so important? i) Social documentation

     Working-class writing, in general, is prone to discriminatory practices, not just working-class women's writing. In 1933, Walter Greenwood's first novel Love on the Dole, received an appreciative review in The Times Literary Supplement: 

                             'As a novel, it stands very high, but in it's qualities as a social document, it's great value lies'. 

     Greenwood's novel has generally received more attention from historians than from literary critics who have treated the novel as important documentary work. In 1959, critics acclaimed Alan Sillitoe's The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner for similar reasons; one review reported: 

                              'As a mirror of working-class life, it is worth several sociology works'. 

     Critics commend working-class texts for their attributes of social documentation. Specific positive criticism focuses on stories about the poor and disadvantaged as giving voice to the silent and economically marginalised, such that any writing involving working-class life they eagerly receive with anthropological fervour. 
     
     Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels appreciated the value of working-class writing as social documentation. They spoke highly of proletarian realist fiction as a mode of social analysis and critique, comparing it favourably to sociological and political exegesis works. Indeed, one aspect of literary criticism, especially for the Marxist critic, is that they should look at a piece of fiction in terms of its socio-historical context: 

                              'A work of art is a product of time and place. Our first apprehension is in terms of its period.'

     These kinds of sociological readings on working-class fiction are helpful, but it often means the literary qualities are ignored. The writer may employ literary devices, such as stream of consciousness technique, disruption of chronological time and dark humour, but these qualities are generally overlooked. This kind of discrimination possibly accounts for the historical lack of working-class writers on the official syllabuses in schools or universities, despite a few notable working-class writers having emerged. Several notable ones include Robert Tressell, Walter Greenwood, and the acclaimed Scottish writer Lewis Grassic Gibbon.