This publication developed out of an introduction to a projected books of essays on British working-class writing based on work published during the years 1990-97 in the London Magazine, when under the editorship of the late Alan Ross, and also in seperate pamphlets, which have appeared intermittently under the imprint of Protean Publications. The present work emphasised 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'.