The Lost Generation

By Brigid Clark

What it Means:Used to characterize the feeling of

disillusionment of American Writers in Europe (especially Paris) during WWI to WWII

Refers to the generation of young people who came of age during and shortly after World War I, alos known as the World War I Generation.

Lost Generation writers considered America not as great as the world believed because the country was devoid of a multinational society

“You are all a lost generation.” — Ernest Hemingway

From The Sun also Rises

Writers of the Lost Generation

Ernest HemingwayF. Scott FitzgeraldJohn Dos Passos E.E. Cummings

Archibald MacLeishEzra PoundSherwood AndersonJohn Steinback

Ernest Hemingway

Works Impact

Ernest Hemingway was born on July 21, 1899 in Illinois. He was an American writer and journalist. During his lifetime he had 7 novels, 6 collections of short stories, and 2 works of non-fiction published, with a further 3 novels and 4 collections of short stories published posthumously. Hemingway's distinctive writing style had an enormous influence on 20th-century fiction. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and his career peaked in 1954 when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature. He died on July 2, 1961.

WorksNovels(1926) The Torrents of Spring(1926) The Sun Also Rises(1929) A Farewell to Arms(1937) To Have and Have Not(1940) For Whom the Bell Tolls(1950) Across the River and Into the Trees(1952) The Old Man and the Sea(1970) Islands in the Stream(1986) The Garden of Eden(1999) True at First Light

Collections(1923) Three Stories and Ten Poems(1925) In Our Time(1927) Men Without Women(1933) Winner Take Nothing(1936) The Snows of Kilimanjaro(1938) The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine Stories(1969) The Fifth Column and Four Stories of the Spanish Civil War(1972) The Nick Adams Stories(1987) The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway(1995) Everyman's Library: The Collected StoriesStage Plays(1961) A Short Happy Life(1967) The Hemingway Hero (working title was: Of Love and Death)

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Works Impact

Francis Scott Fitzgerald was born on September 24, 1896 in St. Paul, Minnesota. He was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are representative of the Jazz Age, a term he actually created. Fitzgerald's work has inspired writers since its publication. J.D. Salinger even saw himself as “Fitzgerald’s successor”. Fitzgerald died on December 21, 1940.

WorksNovelsThis Side of Paradise (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920)The Beautiful and Damned (New York: Scribner, 1922)The Great Gatsby (New York: Scribner, 1925)Tender Is the Night (New York: Scribner, 1934)The Last Tycoon  (New York: Scribners, published posthumously, 1941)Short Story CollectionsFlappers and Philosophers (Short Story Collection, 1920)Tales of the Jazz Age (Short Story Collection, 1922)All the Sad Young Men (Short Story Collection, 1926)Taps at Reveille (Short Story Collection, 1935)OtherThe Vegetable, or From President to Postman (play, 1923)The Crack-Up (essays, 1945)

Short StoriesBernice Bobs Her Hair (Short Story, 1920)Head and Shoulders (Short Story, 1920)The Ice Palace (Short Story, 1920)May Day (Novelette, 1920)The Offshore Pirate (Short Story, 1920)The Curious Case of Benjamin Button (Short Story, 1921)The Diamond as Big as the Ritz (Novella, 1922)Winter Dreams (Short Story, 1922)Dice, Brassknuckles & Guitar (Short Story, 1923)The Rich Boy (Short Story, 1926)The Freshest Boy (Short Story, 1928)Magnetism (Short Story 1928)A New Leaf (Short Story, 1931)Babylon Revisited (Short story, 1931)Crazy Sunday (Short Story, 1932)The Fiend (Short Story, 1935)The Bridal Party (Short Story)The Baby Party (Short Story)The Lost Decade (Short Story, 1938)

John Dos Passos

Works Impact

John Dos Passos, born on January 14, 1869, in Chicago, Illinois, was an American novelist and artist. Passos wrote forty-two novels, as well as poems, essays, and plays, and created more than 400 pieces of art. Passos' revolutionary works of fiction were major influence in American literture. In an 1936 essay, Joe Sartre referred to Dos Passos as "the greatest writer of our time".  Passos died on September 28, 1970.

WorksOne Man's Initiation: 1917 (1920)Three Soldiers (1921)A Pushcart at the Curb (1922)Rosinante to the Road Again (1922)Streets of Night (1923)Manhattan Transfer (1925)Facing the Chair (1927)Orient Express (1927)U.S.A. (1938). Three-volume set includes

The 42nd Parallel (1930)Nineteen Nineteen (1932)The Big Money (1936)The Ground we Stand On (1949)District of Columbia (1952). Three-volume set includesAdventures of a Young Man (1939)Number One (1943)

The Grand Design (1949)Chosen Country (1951)Most Likely to Succeed (1954)The Head and Heart of Thomas Jefferson (1954)The Men Who Made the Nation (1957)The Great Days (1958)Prospects of a Golden Age (1959)Midcentury (1961)Mr. Wilson's War (1962)Brazil on the Move (1963)The Best Times: An Informal Memoir (1966)The Shackles of Power (1966)World in a Glass - A View of Our Century From the Novels of John Dos Passos (1966)The Portugal Story (1969)Century's Ebb: The Thirteenth Chronicle (1970)Easter Island: Island of Enigmas (1970)Lettres à Germaine Lucas Championnière (2007) - only in French

E.E.Cummings

Works Impact

Edward Estlin Cummings was born on October 14, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusettes. He was an American poet, painter, essayist, author, and playwright. His work consists of 3,000 poems, 2 autobiographical novels, 4 plays and several essays. Despite Cummings' use of avant-garde style, his work is usually conventional. Cummings' poetry often deals with themes of love and nature, as well as the relationship of the individual to the masses and to the world. Cummings

died on September 3 1962.

WorksThe Enormous Room (1922), a novelTulips and Chimneys (1923)& (1925) (self-published)XLI Poems (1925)is 5 (1926)HIM (1927) (a play)ViVa (1931)Eimi (1933)No Thanks (1935)Collected Poems (1960)50 Poems (1940)1 × 1 (1944)XAIPE: Seventy-One Poems (1950)i—six nonlectures (1953) Harvard University PressPoems, 1923-1954 (1954)95 Poems (1958)73 Poems (1963) (posthumous)Fairy Tales (1965) (posthumous)

Archibald MacLeish

Works Impact

Archibald MacLeish, born on May 7, 1892, in Glencoe, Illinois, was an American poet, writer and the Librarian of Congress. He is associated with the Modernist school of poetry. He received three Pulitzer Prizes for his work. MacLeish worked to promote the arts, culture, and libraries. In 1923 MacLeish moved to Paris where they joined a group of literary refugees including Ernest Hemingway, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos Fernand Léger,  Pablo Picasso, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley. MacLeish died on April 20, 1982.

WorksTower of Ivory. (1917)Happy Marriage and Other Poems (1924). The Pot of Earth. (1925)Streets of the Earth. (1926)The Hamlet of A. MacLeish. (1928) Conquistador. (1932)Frescoes for Mr. Rockefeller's City. (1933)Panic. (1935)Public Speech. (1936)

The Fall of the City.(1937)Air Raid. (1938)America Was Promises. (1939) The Irresponsibles. (1940)The American Cause and A Time to Speak. (1941) Active and Other Poems. (1948)Poetry and Opinions. (1950)Collected Poems, 1917-1952. (1952) J.B. (1958)

Ezra Pound

Works Impact

Ezra Loomis Pound was born on October 30, 1885, and was a well known American poet, critic and intellectual, and was a major figure of the Modernist movement in the first half of the 20th century. He is considered by many to be the poet responsible for defining a modernist visual in poetry. In the 1920s, Pound began exchanging ideas between popular ?British and American writers, and became well-known for his advancement of writers such as Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams, Ernest Hemingway and James Joyce. Pound contributed Imagism to his poetry, which emphasized precision and exactness in his work. Pound’s goal was to give his poetry a musical tone, rather than the typical metronome. Pound died on November 1, in the year 1972.

Works1908 A Lume Spento, poems (Venice)1908 A Quinzaine for This Yule, poems (London).1909 Personae, poems (London)1909 Exultations, poems (London)1910 Provenca, poems (Boston)1910 The Spirit of Romance, essays (London)1911 Canzoni, poems (London)1912 Ripostes, poems (London)1916 "The Lake Isle", poem1916 Lustra, poems.1917 Twelve Dialogues of Fontenelle, translations1928 A Draft of the Cantos 17–27, poems1928 Selected Poems, edited by T. S. Eliot (London)1928 Ta hio, the great learning, newly rendered into the American language, translation1930 A Draft of XXX Cantos, poems (New York)

1930 Imaginary Letters, essays1931 How to Read, essays1937 The Fifth Decade of Cantos, poems (London)1937 Polite Essays, essays1937 Digest of the Analects, by Confucius, translation1938 Culture, essays1939 What Is Money For?, essays1940 Cantos LII-LXXI, poems1944 Introduzione alla Natura Economica degli S.U.A., prose1947 Confucius: the Unwobbling pivot & the Great digest, translation1949 Elektra (started in 1949, first performed 1987), a play by Ezra Pound and Rudd Fleming1956 Sophocles: The Women of Trachis. A Version by Ezra Pound, translation (London)1959 Thrones: 96–109 de los Cantares, poems (Milan)1968 Drafts and Fragments: Cantos CX-CXVII, poems

Sherwood Anderson

Works Impact

Sherwood Anderson was an American novelist and short story writer born in September 13, 1876. He has influenced a variety of artists, including Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and John Steinbeck. He is most famous for his collection of short stories known as Winesburg, Ohio (1919). His themes are comparable to those many modernist writers, and include Anderson did on March 8, 1941 in South America. His epitaph reads, "Life, Not Death, is the Great Adventure."

WorksWindy McPherson's Son, (1916, novel)Marching Men, (1917, novel)Winesburg, Ohio, (1919, novel)Poor White, (1920, novel)Triumph of the Egg, (1921, short stories)Many Marriages, (1923, novel)Horses and Men, (1923, short stories)A Story-Teller's Story, (1924, semi-autobiographical novel)Sherwood Anderson's Memoirs, (1924, memoirs)An Exhibition of Paintings By Alfred H. Maurer, (1924, non-fiction)Dark Laughter, (1925, novel)A Meeting South, (1925, novel)Modern Writer, (1925, non-fiction)Tar: A Midwest Childhood, (1926, semi-autobiographical novel)Sherwood Anderson's Notebook, (1926, memoirs)Hello Towns, (1929, non-fiction)Alice: The Lost Novel, (1929, novel)Onto Being Published, (1930, non-fiction)Beyond Desire, (1932, novel)Death in the Woods, (1933, short stories)Puzzled America, (1935, essays)Kit Brandon, (1936, novel)

Dreiser: A Biography, (1936, non-fiction)Winesburg and Others, (1937, play)Home Town, (1940, novel)San Francisco at Christmas, (1940, memoirs)Lives of Animals, (1966, novel)Return to Winesburg, Ohio, (1967, essays)The Memoirs of Sherwood Anderson, (1968, memoirs)No Swank, (1970, novel)Perhaps Women, (1970, novel)The Buck Fever Papers, (1971, essays)Ten Short Plays, (1972, plays)Sherwood Anderson and Gertrude Stein: Correspondence and Personal Essays, (1972, essays)Nearer the Grass Roots, (1976, novel)The Writer at His Craft, (1978, non-fiction)Paul Rosenfeld: Voyager in the Arts, (1978, nonfiction)The Teller's Tale, (1982, novel)Selected Letters: 1916 – 1933, (1984, letters)Writer's Diary: 1936–1941, (1987, memoir)Early Writings of Sherwood Anderson, (1989, short stories)Love Letters to Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson, (1990, letters)The Selected Short Stories of Sherwood Anderson, (1995, short stories)Southern Odyssey: Selected Writings By Sherwood Anderson, (1998, short stories)

John Steinback

Works Impact

John Steinbeck was an American writer. He wrote the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel The Grapes of Wrath (1939) and the novel Of Mice and Men (1937). He wrote sixteen novels and five collections of short stories. In 1962, Steinbeck received the Nobel Prize for Literature. Many of Steinbeck's works are on required reading lists in American high schools. Yet, coincidentally, The Grapes of Wrath has been censored out of many high school reading lists. In his novels, Steinbeck uses gorgeous imagery to convey real characters that possess traits that represent society at large. Steinbeck died on December 20, 1968.

WorksCup of Gold (1927)The Pastures of Heaven (1932)The Red Pony (1933)To a God Unknown (1933)Tortilla Flat (1935)In Dubious Battle (1936)The Harvest Gypsies: On the Road to the

Grapes of Wrath (1936)Of Mice and Men (1937)The Long Valley (1938)The Grapes of Wrath (1939)The Forgotten Village (1941)Sea of Cortez: A Leisurely Journal of

Travel and Research (1941)The Moon Is Down (1942)Bombs Away: The Story of a Bomber

Team (1942)Cannery Row (1945)

The Wayward Bus (1947)The Pearl (1947)A Russian Journal (1948)Burning Bright (1950)The Log from the Sea of Cortez (1951)East of Eden (1952)Sweet Thursday (1954)The Short Reign of Pippin IV: A

Fabrication (1957)Once There Was A War (1958)The Winter of Our Discontent (1961)Travels with Charley: In Search of

America (1962)America and Americans (1966)Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden

Letters (1969)Viva Zapata! (1975)The Acts of King Arthur and His Noble

Knights (1976)

IMPACT

America's awareness of its lack of cosmopolitanism helped establish America’s culture as it is today.

As American customs became more defined, European and other countries recognized America as a distinctive culture and nation.

Beyond this, the novels of the Lost Generation give insight into the American life during the 1920s