The Radical Novel in the United States, 1900-54. Some Interrelations of Literature and Society

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between society and literature and shows how the proletarian novel, a literary phenomenon of the 1930s, was a reflection of current interest in revolutionary Marxism. Also discussed are the reasons why literary critics of the following decades dismissed these writings as bizarre and improbable and questioned how the writers could have so badly miscalculated the future. Examples are drawn from socialist works such as Issac Kahn Freedman's By Bread Alone and Rebecca Harding Davis' Life in the Iron Mills, Edward Dahlberg's Bottom Dogs, Mary Heaton's Strike!, and Richard Wright's Native Son. The book discusses why so little radical fiction was written between 1939 and 1954. A chronological bibliography of American radical novels from 1901 to 1954 is also included.

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