The reception of early socialist literature in Germany departs radically from the principles of traditional literary criticism. As the author shows, there is no consensus about the characteristics of socialist literature, and no canon of recognized texts: both during the period 1860-1914, and in later decades, the literary texts written in and for the socialist movement were judged by the extent to which they assisted the work of the movement or by the political correctness of their content. Changes in the body of texts discussed and shifts in the patterns of criticism directly reflect changes in the ideology of the Social-Democratic movement, or in the political agendas of later critics. In this pioneering book, Schulz discusses the development of the socialist movement and its political philosophy before proceeding to its cultural theory and practice and the role literature played in both, bringing out the strong links between the criticism itself and the ideological discourse of German socialism and its critics.