Lost Generation
WWI's wandering writers
The Lost Generation refers to the cohort of writers and artists who came of age during World War I and felt disillusioned by its senseless carnage.
The term, attributed to Gertrude Stein and popularized by Hemingway, described Americans who expatriated to Paris in the 1920s—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Dos Passos.
More broadly, it names anyone from that war-scarred generation who felt unmoored from traditional values: The Lost Generation sought meaning in art and pleasure after the war destroyed their faith in progress.
- FitzgeraldPatronymic from Gerald
- The Great GatsbyTwenties novel about obsession
- A Moveable FeastObservance with variable date
- expatriateOne living abroad permanently
Gertrude Stein · Ezra Pound · Paris · modernism · disillusionment · postwar · Jazz Age · Roaring Twenties
France's chief city
- MontparnasseParis arts district
- Left BankParis's intellectual quarter
- café cultureSocial life around coffeehouses
- transatlanticSpanning the ocean between continents
First global military conflict
- disillusionmentBitter loss of faith
- veteransFormer armed forces members
- traumaLasting psychological wound
- aimlessnessLack of direction
shell shock · trench warfare · armistice · Prohibition · flappers · cynicism · purposelessness · rootlessness
Hemingway
- FitzgeraldPatronymic from Gerald
- The Great GatsbyTwenties novel about obsession
- A Moveable FeastObservance with variable date
Gertrude Stein · Ezra Pound · expatriate · Paris · modernism · disillusionment · postwar · Jazz Age · Roaring Twenties · stream of consciousness
Paris
France's chief city
- MontparnasseParis arts district
- Left BankParis's intellectual quarter
- café cultureSocial life around coffeehouses
transatlantic · bohemian · Riviera · Europe · wandering
World War I
First global military conflict
- disillusionmentBitter loss of faith
- veteransFormer armed forces members
- traumaLasting psychological wound
aimlessness · shell shock · trench warfare · armistice · Prohibition · flappers · cynicism · purposelessness · rootlessness · interwar period
- 1920s AmericaCharles Lindbergh, Jazz Age, Spirit of St. Louis, flappers, transatlantic flight
- generationsbaby boomers, millennials, Gen Z, Gen X, baby boomer
- American LiteratureThe Great Gatsby, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Scarlet Letter, Moby-Dick, Moby Dick
- American ModernismGeorgia O'Keeffe, Edward Hopper, Ashcan School, Man Ray, Gertrude Stein
- Expatriatesexpats, emigres, permanent residents, green card holders, foreign workers
- Literary CirclesBloomsbury Group, Harlem Renaissance, salon, coterie, bluestockings
Lost GenerationGreatest Generation
Americans spanning depression and war
Lost GenerationGreatest Generation
Americans spanning depression and war
idealists · optimists · traditionalists · true believers · social reformers
Lost GenerationGreatest Generation
Americans spanning depression and war
builders · founders · nation-builders · homecomers · pioneers
lost, loser, losing, generation, generate, generator, loses, generations, generated