Abstract:Fictional treatment of the poor has varied with changing perceptions of their position and role in English society. In part these perceptions have been affected by the social locations of the writers. But this essay argues that a major determinant of the treatment of the poor has been the inheritance of a pastoral tradition of viewing them. Writers have largely worked within this tradition. Only in the 1930s was a determined attempt made to break out of it. This failed, and after the war fiction gradually abandoned its efforts to deal with the poor, preferring to leave that to the newer media of film and television.