A bestseller in Quebec when it originally appeared, The Town Below has been called the "pioneer novel of working-class Quebec" and exploded, with great controversy, the smothering social and religious strictures prevalent among postwar Québécois.

Roger Lemelin (1919-1992) was born in working-class Quebec City. He published eight novels and numerous short stories and essays and won several awards for his books. In addition to the awards he won for The Town Below, he also adapted his second novel, Les Plouffe, into the popular CBC-TV show The Plouffe Family, which ran from 1953 to 1959.

Michael Gnarowski compiled The Concise Bibliography of English Canadian Literature, and edited the Critical Views of Canadian Writers series for McGraw-Hill Ryerson. Gnarowski is professor emeritus at Carleton University in Ottawa.