The Lost Generation

The "Lost Generation" became disillusioned after their traumatic experiences that they endured during World War I. The group of writers who moved to Paris believed that America was intolerant, materialistic, and unspiritual. They helped to establish many of the styles and themes that are still used in literature today.

Origin

Stein quoted her car mechanic, You are all a "génération perdue."

Stein told Hemingway, "That is what you are. That's what you all are ... all of you young people who served in the war. You are a lost generation."



The Sun Also Rises

"Wherein the 'lost generation' that followed the War goes to the devil with a smile on the lip but with despair in its heart."

The idiosyncrasies of "Lost Generation" authors

abandonment of materialism prevalent in America

idealism 

philosophical musings

alcoholism 

extramarital affairs 

lived in Paris 

created a mold for many future writers

Prominent Authors

The term embraces Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, John Dos Passos, E.E. Cummings, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, and many other writers who made Paris the center of their literary activities in the 1920s.

After the 1920s


In the 1930s, as these writers turned in different directions, their works lost the distinctive stamp of the postwar period. The last representative works of the era were Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night (1934) and Dos Passos’ The Big Money (1936).

Works Cited

Fitch, Noel Riley. Sylvia Beach and the lost generation : a history of literary Paris in the twenties and thirties. New York : Norton, 1983. Print.

"Lost Generation." Brittanica. Encyclopædia Britannica, n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2013.

"The Lost Generation and 1920s Pop Culture." Tripod. n.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2013.

"The Sun Also Rises." Flickr. n.p., n.d. Web. 27 Feb 2013.