This pioneering work traces the history of the socialist novel, covering 150 years of creative writing. It spans the hopes and aspirations of the Chartist writers in Britain and the modern variety of ideological and literary positions of socialist intellectuals. The major conceptual and individual developments are carefully analysed, and the work brings together essays by such distinguished writers as Raymond Williams, John Goode, Raymón Ortega and Marsha Vicinus. It proves a framework for wider discussion, situating the socialist novel in the overall framework of English literature. Contents: New, and original, Editor's Introduction; Martha Vicinus, 'Chartist fiction and he development of a class-based literature'; J.M. Rignall, ‘Between Chartism and the 1880s: J.W. Overton and E. Lynn Linton'; John Goode, 'Margaret Harkness and the socialist novel;'; Jack Mitchell, ‘Early harvest: three anti-capitalist novels published in 1914'; H. Gustav Klaus, ‘Silhouettes of revolution: some neglected novels of the early 1920s'; Raymond Williams, ‘Working-class, proletarian, socialist: problems in some Welsh novels'; Raymón López Ortega, ‘The language of the working-class novel of the 1930s'; Ingrid von Rosenberg, ‘Militancy, anger and resignation: alternative moods in the working-class novel of the 1950s and early 1960s'; Kiernan Ryan, ‘Socialist fiction and the education of desire: Mervyn Jones, Raymond Williams, John Berger'; Index.