The Lost Generation
The Lost Generation Collection brings together a selection of literary works written in the aftermath of World War I. These selections focus on the writings of authors who were part of the Lost Generation, a term coined by Gertrude Stein to describe the disillusioned and alienated generation who came of age just before the first major global conflict.
A Farewell to Arms, written by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1929, is the story of Frederic Henry, an officer with the Italian army in World War I, and his relationship with Catherine Barkley, a British nurse. Some have noted the similarities between the main character and Hemingway, who also served in the Italian army as an ambulance driver in 1918, and his nurse, Agnes Von Kurowsky, who cared for Hemingway after he was wounded.The... Read A Farewell to Arms Summary
“A Very Short Story” is one of Ernest Hemingway’s earliest literary works. It originally appeared as one of 18 vignettes that made up the chapbook in our time, published in 1924. The story was later republished, along with the original vignettes and 14 additional short stories, in a new and expanded edition of In Our Time in 1925. This guide refers to that later edition. “A Very Short Story” is semi-autobiographical, based loosely upon Hemingway’s... Read A Very Short Story Summary
“Bernice Bobs Her Hair” is a short story by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The story demonstrates Fitzgerald’s interest in the shifting social trends of the 1920s American Jazz Age, in which he and his wife, Zelda, figured prominently. While drawing on Modernist concerns and the literary tradition of makeover stories, Fitzgerald particularly highlights themes of Shifting Feminine Identity in the Early 20th Century, Downfall Through the Temptation of Social Acceptance, and Detachment in Modern... Read Bernice Bobs Her Hair Summary
Four Quartets is a collection of four poems by T.S. Eliot. The four pieces were originally published between 1934 and 1942, during a period of time in which Eliot’s life was disrupted by the events of World War II. They were then collected into a single volume in 1943. The poems are linked loosely by theme; all of them are about the relationship between people and the divine. At the time of its publication, several of... Read Four Quartets Summary
Published in 1939, Good Morning, Midnight is a semiautobiographical work written by Jean Rhys. A writer of Creole and Welsh descent, Rhys lived in the British West Indies before traveling to England to study. She married and traveled throughout Europe with her first husband, a journalist of French origin. This marriage ended in divorce. Sasha Jensen, the narrator of Good Morning, Midnight, also leaves London to follow her husband Enno. They eventually settle in Paris... Read Good Morning, Midnight Summary
Ernest Hemingway’s 1927 short story “Hills Like White Elephants” was published first in the periodical transitions and then in his short story collection Men Without Women. One of his most well-known short stories, it utilizes many of the techniques that typify Hemingway’s writing, such as minimalism, direct dialogue, and indirect characterization. The story consists almost entirely of dialogue, with only sparse, sporadic narrative description. Please note that this story concerns discussions of abortion and may... Read Hills Like White Elephants Summary
The Great Gatsby is a fiction novel published in 1925 by the American author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Inspired by Fitzgerald’s experiences during the Jazz Age of the 1920s, The Great Gatsby captures the prosperity and the hedonism of the era through a cast of characters who reside in the fictional Long Island towns of West Egg and East Egg. Despite a cold reaction from critics and audiences upon its release, many modern scholars include The... Read The Great Gatsby Summary
Published in 1926, Ernest Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises is a modernist novel regarded as a masterful portrait of the Lost Generation. It is a roman à clef, structured in three acts, that depicts characters based upon Hemingway’s friends and associates. Upon initial publication, it received mixed reviews, but is now considered a classic of 20th-century literature. In 1957, it was adapted into a film starring Ava Gardner (though Hemingway, reportedly, did not like the... Read The Sun Also Rises Summary
In 1934, Jean Rhys wrote Voyage in the Dark, her third published novel and a book believed to besemi-autobiographical.Voyage in the Dark is the story of eighteen-year-old Anna Morgan, a woman transitioning from her childhood in the West Indies into her adulthood in England. For Anna, Britain is a foreign landscape that is as mundane and repetitive as it is cold and harsh. Although she appears to adjust herself to England, her thoughts are easily led... Read Voyage in the Dark Summary
Wide Sargasso Sea (1966), Jean Rhys’s best-known novel, is a retelling that contemplates the life of Bertha Mason Rochester, a minor character in Charlotte Brontë’s novel Jane Eyre (1847). Rhys made a career out of writing novels and short stories that contemplated the lives of unconventional women. She wrote and published most of her fiction in the 1930s, then went out of print for several decades. The rise of feminist and postcolonial literary studies brought... Read Wide Sargasso Sea Summary