Tom Woodin is Reader in the Social History of Education at the Institute of Education, University College London

• Introduction1 Sources of radicalism2 Young people’s writing3 The good old days?4 A beginner reader is not a beginner thinker5 The workshop and working-class writing6 Making writers: more writing than welding7 Alternative publishing and audience participation8 Chuck out the teacher: critical pedagogy in the community9 Class and identity10 The mainstream and the movementConclusionNotesBibliographyIndex

'Tom Woodin should be heartily congratulated for his exemplary study of British working-class writing and publishing by ‘the fed’ (Federation of Worker Writers and Community Publishers) from the mid-1970s to the early 2000s. Woodin provides his readers with a critical yet sympathetic history of ‘the fed’ and the working class poets and writers whose work it published. By doing so he has made an enormous contribution to the study of working-class literature, and indeed working-class studies, in the UK, US, or elsewhere around the globe.'Gary Jones, American International College'A compelling read.'British Journal of Educational Studies