Hilton's works were experimental, using semi-autobiographical first-person narratives and internal monologue to probe the relation of events in his life - and the lives of his characters - to the feelings and attitudes of himself and his subjects.

His writing was also unconventional at the time of its publication for its proud but critical depictions of working-class people and settings, centring on his native Lancashire.

Born into a large working-class family, Hilton grew up in a slum before starting work in a cotton mill at the age of eleven.

The tutor posted the texts to the modernist literary editor John Middleton Murry who invited Hilton to contribute to his magazine, The Adelphi.

[1] In late 1937 and early 1938, he published a series of autobiographical essays in The Adelphi, a literary journal edited by John Middleton Murry.

[3] In 1938, Hilton was approached by Jonathan Cape about writing a travel narrative, offering him a £50 advance to fund the trip and £50 upon completion of his book.

Hilton accepted the proposal, and in May of that year he and his wife Mary packed their belongings in a large pram and spent six months walking through "northern and midland industrial regions and cities such as Sheffield, Leicester, the Potteries and Birmingham; the home counties by way of Epsom and Buckinghamshire; and Bristol, Stroud and Devon in the west country.

His youngest brother, Stanley Hilton, died at sea in 1941, when the trawler Arctic Trapper, on which he was a stoker, was attacked by German planes and foundered.

"[10] In The New Statesman, C. E. M. Joad described English Ways as "the most continuously interesting account of modern England that I have read, the best thing of its kind since Rural Rides.

He praised Hilton for treating his "subject from the inside," providing his readers a "vivid notion of what it feels like to be poor", and accurately portraying the "voices of the innumerable industrial workers whom he typifies.

"[13] Before travelling north to begin his research for The Road to Wigan Pier, Orwell wrote to Hilton asking for advice and lodging on his trip.

In his unpublished autobiography Caliban Boswelling, Hilton criticised the book, claiming that although Orwell "went to Wigan...he might well have stayed away" as he only "wasted money, energy and wrote piffle."

"Orwell reviewed English Ways enthusiastically in the Adelphi in 1940 and discussed Hilton's work with Desmond Hawkins in 'The Proletarian Writer', broadcast on the BBC Home Service in December the same year and reprinted in The Listener.

In addition to writing an article for the Middlesex Polytechnic special issue, Andy Croft mentions Hilton in his book Red Letter Days: British Fiction in the 1930s.