A pioneering study of working-class reading and writing. Its first publication helped revive a number of literary reputations, such as those of Alexander Baron and James Hanley, as well as distinguishing distinct regional literary cultures and narrative styles still existing in Britain. Dockers and Detectives drew attention to a group of Liverpool writers who produced a series of expressionist novels about tenement life and the hardships of life at sea, while also containing an essay on the vibrant literature of London's Jewish East End. It provided an assessment of the popularity of American 'tough-guy' crime writing in Britain in the 1930s, and was also the first to take seriously the popular literature of the Second World War - on the home front, on the battlefield, and in the prisoner-of-war camp - with all the moral and political questions raised by that writing.