This publication developed out of an introduction to a projected book of essays on British working-class writers based on work published during the years 1990-1997 in the London Magazine, when under the editorship of the late Alan Ross, and also in seperate pamphlets, which have appeared under the imprint of Protean Publications. This present work emphasises the practical problems of the working-class writer: his or her 'conditions of production', including the day to day difficulties of learning and practising the writing craft while trying to earn a living: the 'relations of production', with some particular attention to the experience of being outside of the privileged elitist networking of fee-paying schools and 'Oxbridge' that in the British context has played such a major role in what constitutes 'literature'.