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LOST GENERATION

LOST GENERATION refers to a group of early-twentieth-century American writers, notably Hart Crane, e. e. cummings, John Dos Passos, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thornton Wilder, and Thomas Wolfe. The writings of these authors were shaped by World War I and self-imposed exile from the American mainstream. Malcolm Cowley, a chronicler of the era, suggested that they shared a distaste for the grandiose patriotic war manifestos, although they differed widely in their means of expressing that distaste. The influence of T. S. Eliot, James Joyce, and Gertrude Stein, as well as encouragement of editors and publishers of magazines such as Dial, Little Review, transition, and Broom, were significant in the development of their writings.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Cowley, Malcolm. A Second Flowering: Works and Days of the Lost Generation. New York: Viking Press, 1974.

Dolan, Marc. Modern Lives: A Cultural Re-reading of the "Lost Generation." West Lafayette, Ind.: Purdue University Press, 1996.

Sarah Ferrell/D. B.

See also Generational Conflict; Literature: Popular Literature.